When the start of the school year approaches, lines of parents seeking hard-to-get spots for their kids snake around the outside of top-tier urban primary schools. The scene at Taiwan's remote mini primary schools offers a stark contrast--schools offer parents perk after perk in their ongoing efforts to keep enrollments high enough to avoid being merged with another school, or shut down altogether.

When the government closed 113 primary schools between 1999 and 2005, their graduates lost a little piece of their childhoods. A further 19 schools nationwide were closed prior to the start of school last September. The threat of closure has become a source of anxiety for the students and teachers at more than 500 mini primary schools across the island. As the end of summer vacation approaches every year, they worry that their school won't open in the fall and that they might all go their separate ways.

The Hsinhsien Extension of Hsintien's Wulai Primary School was closed in 1994, but was later reborn as the experimental Seedlings School.

Treasuring the days

Smangus Village, located deep in the mountains of Hsinchu County, is a place where parents and children alike treasure the start of school. But the walk to the nearest school, Hsinkuang Primary School, is anything but easy--it stands on a hilltop on the opposite side of the valley, six or seven hours away on foot. The distance forced the village's children to live at the school. Though a new road would help some, a roundtrip to the school and back along its winding route would likely still take parents more than two hours.

To keep the children of Smangus coming, Hsinkuang's principal offered them a little extra leeway: "As long as they made it to school before dinner time on Monday, they weren't considered late."

Three years ago, the Atayal people of Smangus called a students' strike. They argued that the students could study on their own and even cut bamboo to build a simple classroom. Hsinchu County responded by finally establishing a Hsinkuang Primary "experimental class" in the village to spare the children the arduous journey to school and to keep them with their parents. But with talk of mergers and closures always in the air, the students are plagued by the worry that their "experimental class" might not open for the next academic year.

Taiwan's falling birthrate means that the nation's more than 500 mini elementary schools (those with fewer than 100 students) are facing budget cuts, mergers with other schools and outright closure.

400 classes cut in a year

With 15 students, Smangus's experimental class is far from the island's smallest primary school.

According to the most recent figures from the Ministry of Education (MOE), Taiwan has 566 mini primary schools with an enrollment of fewer than 100 students. On average, teachers at these schools have six students, each of whom consumes NT$140,000 per year in educational resources. This figure is far higher than for schools overall, with teachers having an average of 19 students, costing NT$100,000 each per year to educate.

As a consequence of Taiwan's falling birthrate, the number of first graders enrolled in the island's primary schools fell below 300,000 in 2005 to only 280,000. According to MOE projections, this figure will drop to 210,000 in 2011. This means that the nation's primary schools will see enrollments fall by an average of more than 13,000 students per year for the next six years, and that more than 400 classes per year will need to be eliminated.

With students disappearing and the number of mini primary schools rising sharply, it is imperative that small schools be merged or closed. "Falling birthrates are a global trend," says Pan Wen-chung, head of the MOE's Department of Elementary Education. "Taiwan can't fight it. These days, the government lacks funds. We have to be pragmatic and face facts."

Closing a school is a serious matter. The MOE last year promulgated a series of indices to help county and municipal governments determine which to close. The nine indices, each of which is evaluated on a point scale, include a school's enrollment, its enrollment trend, its distance from other public schools, the means of transportation between it and nearby schools, the age of the school, the age of the classrooms, and the community's degree of dependence upon the school.

If local residents were moving out of a community, and the school had fewer than 20 students, was located within a kilometer of another school, was fewer than 20 years old, and had little interaction with the community, it would score low and probably be closed.

The MOE also created three exceptions to the closure recommendations: If a school is the only one in a rural township or an Aboriginal area, or if the route to a neighboring school passes through a danger zone, such as an area prone to landslides, it cannot be closed no matter how few students it has.

On the first day of their visit to Yuguang, students from city schools squeal at the sight of the poison-skinned central Formosan toad (Bufo bankorensis). Some 40,000 students have visited Yuguang since it created Taiwan's first domestic study-tour program.

Best is worst

Schools with fewer than 100 students face other problems than just their costs. Their students have fewer interpersonal relationships, and the schools themselves suffer from inadequate equipment and unmotivated teachers.

Many small schools have too few students to field a basketball team. Those with fewer than ten students can't even manage a game of dodge ball. And when there is only one student in a grade, the best student is also the worst and lacks classmates with whom to discuss issues and compare work, which influences how effectively he or she learns.

Counties and municipalities are taking various approaches to the issue. Chiayi, Yunlin, Tainan and Pingtung Counties have already closed some school. In contrast, Taipei County, which has the island's greatest number of mini primary schools, has vowed not to make such decisions lightly and will instead strive to transform its schools, adding to their value by bringing more people into them.

The Tungshih Extension of Taipei County's Pinghsi Primary School is now silent, and time seems to stand still on the abandoned school grounds. The Pinghsi Farmers' Association plans to lease the campus and turn it into an ecological training center and meeting hall.

Multipurpose schools

Taipei County, the nation's most populous county, is home to 51 mini primary schools, more than any other county in Taiwan. In spite of serious financial pressures, the county has not closed a mini school in two years. Instead, during Pan Wen-chung's tenure as head of its education bureau, it began promoting a "unique schools" program. Pan's plan focused on increasing the educational value of small schools in remote areas by uncovering their "natural resources." The program provides urban students with hands-on experience with nature, and has grown into a new kind of "learning industry."

"Schools must become more diverse to address the needs of our changing society," says Pan. "Big, comprehensive schools are no longer the standard. Rather than closing small schools, we should be actively working to transform them."

Pan believes that schools are important members of the community, and that mini schools should be taking on more roles, growing from formal educational institutions into community learning centers. They can, for example, invigorate their neighborhoods by serving as community colleges over the holidays, and by leasing their facilities and equipment to the community.

The current round of revisions to the National Education Act aims to provide a legal basis for schools to establish special accounts for money raised through donations and facilities rentals, giving schools some flexibility in addressing their particular needs.

Yuguang Elementary School in the hilly Pinglin area offers an example of another approach. Over the last four years, the school has promoted a study-tour program that gives children first-hand experience with the community's rich natural environment. So far, more than 40,000 students have participated. "People say Yuguang is small," argues Yuguang's principal, Kuo Hsiung-chun, "but we have made it much bigger."

New uses for idle campuses

Pan, a strong advocate of the study tour concept, emphasizes that "profits" are not the point for small schools offering study tours; instead, their focus is creating "value." If a public school has "value," its equipment and community education resources can continue to be useful even if the school itself closes.

This is no pie-in-the-sky theory. When the Taipei County Government closed Hsinhsien Primary in Wulai Township in 1994, it leased the property to the Caterpillar Foundation, which then used it to open its pioneering Seedlings School.

And becoming a private school is not the only option. Public schools that have ceased operations can turn their facilities over to social welfare organizations, and campuses deep in the mountains can take advantage of their setting to become privately operated natural history museums or base camps for study tours.

When the Shihnung Extension of Chiayi County's Chungshan Primary School was shut down two years ago, the MOE provided a NT$3.5 million grant to turn it into a campground. Since then, it has organized dozens of camping trips. "The central and local governments must be determined," says Pan. "We simply cannot let school buildings become derelict. Once they do, they are almost never put to use again."

A case in point is the extension school of Chiayi County's Kangchien Primary School. Within one year of being shuttered its grounds had become a veritable wilderness, and delinquents vandalized its buildings before plans for their reuse were put into effect.

Making big use of small schools

With shuttered schools being put to new uses, mini schools facing the threat of closure are no longer passively awaiting their own "deaths." Instead, they are turning their crisis into an opportunity.

Chianan Primary, located on the coast in Tainan County, faced the threat of closure eight years ago when enrollment plummeted to only 42 students. But Principal Li Chen-yi fought hard for the school, using a NT$1 million-plus grant to tear down the school gate and outer wall, build a track, and dig ecological ponds. Li's efforts won him a national award for innovation in school operations. These days the campus is green and alive. And, with new students coming in from other districts, enrollment has risen to 115.

Small schools, big innovations

The traditional system for assigning school principals puts them first in a mini school. Hsu Wen-tau, director of the Taipei County education bureau's education division, has noticed that this helps their professional development--principals at such schools don't have to spend as much time on administrative work as their big-city counterparts, leaving them with more time to develop new ideas and manage their schools creatively. Moreover, the task of integrating a remote school into its community, and the enthusiasm needed to do so, provides them with experience and a set of values that they can build upon when they later run an urban school.

With small schools facing such enormous pressure to close, there's no guarantee that even well-known schools like Yuguang, schools that have successfully transformed themselves, will survive. But these mini schools are making the most of their opportunities--drawing attention to themselves, energizing their teachers, and building their students' confidence. Even if the schools are ultimately closed, they've written a beautiful, moving tale that will live on in the memories of those who played a part in its creation.

Mini Elementary Schools Fact File

* Schools in Taiwan with less than 100 students: 566

* Total 3536 classes, 36,377 students

* Average number of students per class: 10.3

* Teacher-student ratio: 1:6 Ratio in all schools: 1:19

* Annual cost per student: approx. NT$140,000 All schools: approx. NT$100,000(MOEA statistics for 2005)

* Taiwan's largest elementary school: Kuanghua Elementary, Hsinchuang City, Taipei County: 4975 students

* Taiwan's smallest elementary school: Wentian Elementary, Chushan Township, Hsinchu County: 7 students(2005)

Potential uses of campus after school closure

1. Cultural heritage transmission: Ecological park, community college, scout camp, etc.

2. Non-educational institution: Orphanage, floral exhibition center, fruit and vegetable distribution center, etc.

3. Continued maintenance and use by local government: Seniors' activity center, community center

4. Collaboration with private sector: preservation as historic site and tourist destination, study tour center