were amended on January 15, 2020, in order to prohibit the confinement of prisoners to solitary cells for more than 15 days; and also to include a mechanism for health assessment by medical personnel. Corporal Punishment 24. In 2017, the Humanistic Education Foundation received 29 complaints lodged by students in the Greater Tainan area, and reported them to the Control Yuan. The Control Yuan’s investigation found that most schools in Tainan City tended to accept the teachers’ subjective accounts of their motives when investigating those accused of “illegal punishment,” and usually misidentified “corporal punishment” as “improper discipline.” Therefore, teachers who were suspected of exercising corporal punishment would not be punished by law, nor would they receive additional supervision or proper counselling. The Bureau of Education of Tainan City Government failed to supervise the schools within its jurisdiction, and adopted the schools’ decisions across the board. It can be seen through this case that children in elementary schools or younger in Taiwan, who are still developing both physically and mentally, and require due care, inconceivably accounted for a majority of the objects of corporal punishment in schools. And as the statistics concerning corporal punishment in schools were all as verified and reported by schools themselves, the actual numbers might be worse than those published by the Ministry of Education. The Ministry of Education was clearly aware of said circumstances and related disputes, but failed to resolve or improve the situation proactively. After investigation and listing for continued oversight by the Control Yuan, the Ministry of Education made systematic adjustments to the prevention and treatment of corporal punishment incidents in the Teacher’s Act amended on June 30, 2020, and its sublaws thereto, to uphold the educational principle of “zero corporal punishment” promulgated in the Education Basic Law. 25. In 2018, National Chiayi Special School was found to have tolerated teachers’ abuse of students. Some students were forced to eat red peppers, beaten with hot melted glue sticks or toilet plungers; pulled by their hair and banged against the wall, forced to wear paper diapers on their heads all day, deprived of food all day as punishment, or ordered to cut up their favorite puppets to make pencil bags for their classmates, and so on. Upon investigation and subsequent followup by the Control Yuan, the Ministry of Education supervised the school-inquestion to come up with an improvement plan, and paid monitoring visits. It also disciplined those teachers and the principal who acted in contravention of their duties, and amended related laws and regulations governing discipline of incompetent teachers. It further improved the mechanism dedicated to following up on transfer students and reviewing their files. The Ministry of Education should continue supervising schools ex officio, in order to prevent these corporal punishment cases from re-occurring. 14