National Experimental High School

National Experimental High School At Hsinchu Science Park (NEHS; ), situated near the Hsinchu Science Park in Taiwan, is a public, coeducational school (pre-primary-12). Founded in August 1983, the school was proposed by the founder of the Science Park Kwoh-Ting Li. NEHS is administered by the Ministry of Education, National Science Council and the Science Park Administration. With the exception of the rigorous "Advanced Math and Science Class" of the Senior High School department, NEHS only admits children of employees of private enterprises in the Science Park, government organizations, the Industrial Technology Research Institute, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, and National Tsing Hua University. In 2009, the school adjusted qualification and number of enrollment in response to the national decline of birth rate and to late-2000s financial crisis (which impacts the employment status of parents working in the Science Park).

International Bilingual School at Hsinchu Science Park (IBSH), formerly known as the Bilingual Department, is affiliated with NEHS and provides a rigorous American-style curriculum supplemented with a mandatory Mandarin Chinese language program in addition to other national education requirements dictated by the Taiwanese government. IBSH is located on the same campus as NEHS.

Location
The school is in a residential district of "Phase I" of Hsinchu Science Park, on its eastern border with "Phase III." The school is about 5 km southeast from Hsinchu Station, the center of downtown Hsinchu City. The school is close to the Hsinchu city's eastern border with Zhudong, Hsinchu county. It is built on a westward slope.

Lake Placid (also called "Artificial Lake", a pond built by the Science Park) is in the northwest of the school, next to its field and track ground. In the west of the school is the Jinshan Temple, first built by Chinese settlers in 1853, renovated in 1889, preserved as a class three historic site in 1986, and renovated in 1991. The temple is the center of a broader historic region called "Jinshan Mian" including today's Science Park.

Jinshan Mian (, also written as "Kin-San-Mian") was named and developed by Hakka and Hokkien settler organization in the late 18th century. Before the development, this region was a mountainous buffer between Chinese immigrant territory in the west and aboriginal territory in the east.

Further west is the residential district of the Science Park, where many students live.

In the southwest and the south is the industrial district of the Science Park, where many parents of the students work.

In the east of the school, before its main entrance and across Jieshou Road, is the "Jinshan Road area". This is a grid-planned area with Jinshan Road as its main street. It is a residential and commercial district developed by the Science Park in the late 1990s to accommodate houses relocated by "Phase III" development of the park. There are many restaurants in this area.

In the north of the school (along the Jieshou Road) is Guandong Police Station. Further north is the World Senior High School. Further north is the northern end of Jieshou Road which connects to Guangfu Road, a main east-west artery of Hsinchu City. This section of Guangfu Road is known as "Guandong Bridge", which is also a commercial district thriving on the Science Park. There are stations of Hsinchu City Bus and many students take buses from here to go west to the downtown or go east to Hsinchu county. <!-- ==Departments== The school is composed of five departments: four "regular" departments(Kindergarten, Elementary, Junior High and Senior High School) and one Bilingual department.

The four regular departments facilitate a local Mandarin education and adopt the Taiwan national curriculum. Following the education system in Taiwan, a High School exam is required for experimental students if they wish to continue their enrollment for high school. The Senior High School Department is regarded as one of the most prestigious senior high schools in the nation with the highest admission scores in the Hsinchu-Miaoli area.

The Bilingual Department (with grades 1-12) serves students in the English-speaking community who seek an American college-preparatory education, or less commonly, plan to transfer to the local school system. Students come from business, professional, government, and diplomatic families. In the past, 47% of Bilingual Department parents had PhD's. The Bilingual Department currently has an enrollment of over 600 students. It is also known as the International Bilingual School at Hsinchu Science Park (IBSH). The department was operated as a magnet program to attract overseas scholars and professionals to stay in the Hsinchu "Greater Science Park Area" by providing special education opportunities to their children.

There are generally three times as many regular students as compared to Bilingual Students, with the ratio higher for elementary school. While students from the Bilingual department often call the other four departments "the experimental department", and refer to the students as "Experimentals", these terms are only used unofficially within the Bilingual department. Students from the four Mandarin-speaking departments refer to themselves as "the regular department". Students from both sides refer to bilingual students as "Bilinguals".

The Kindergarten Department
The Kindergarten department is taught by twelve teachers and consists of two grades. One grade is designed for children older than five and the younger grade is taught for children older than four. Each grade is divided into three classes with a maximum of thirty children per class.

The Elementary Department
The Elementary Department has its own building and includes the first grade to sixth grade, with seven classes each. There are also eight classes for special education. Numerous events and student activities are available in the department. One that demonstrates the education of self-governance is the annual "Little Mayor Election," which allows sixth graders to run for election.

The Junior High and Senior High Department
The Junior High and Senior High students reside in the same building, sharing common classrooms, equipment, and teacher offices. There are five classes in each of the three grades in Junior High Department and four each in the Senior High Department, one of the four being the Mathematical and Science Talent class (數理資優班). A fifth class, the Science class (科學班), was introduced during the 2009-2010 school year. Each class has less than forty students. The uniform comes in summer and winter suites. Junior High Department uniforms consist of cream-colored shirts and navy blue shorts pants for boys and maroon pleated skirts/navy pants for girls. The uniform of Senior High Department consists of pink shirts, maroon ties, and navy pants for boys and navy pleated skirts/navy pants for girls. There is a Student Association in the Senior High Department responsible for department-wide events such as proms and sport competitions.

The Bilingual Department
International Bilingual School at the Hsinchu-Science-Park (IBSH) is a public, coeducational school (1st-12th grade). The Bilingual Department serves students in the English-speaking community who either seek an American college-preparatory education or plan to transfer to the local school system. Students come from business, professional, government and diplomatic families. Forty-one percent of the International Bilingual School parents have Ph.D's. IBSH had a total enrollment of 601 students and a graduating class of 51 students during the 2008-2009 school year. The Bilingual Department is a particularly small school as compared to other schools worldwide. Each grade (from 1 to 12) has about 50 students, with an average of 25 students each classroom. These classrooms are divided in "the current grade" followed by each "A" or "B" afterwards. For instance, a student in the 12th grade may be either in the 12A or 12B classroom. The students assigned to each different classrooms are entired random.

IBSH is accredited by the Ministry of Education and is administered by both the Ministry of Education and the National Science Council. The International Bilingual school is operated as a magnet program and has also achieved candidacy for accreditation by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) since June 2008.

The academic program at IBSH is rigorous, and students face demanding instructors and a fully bilingual (English and Mandarin) curriculum. IBSH operates on a semester system with a 200-day school year, beginning in late August and ending in late June. IBSH offers 17 Advanced Placement (AP) courses, with subjects ranging from Biology to AP European History. Students are required to study Mandarin Chinese in an intensive language program taught by native speakers. The intensive Chinese program uses textbooks identical to those used in local Taiwanese schools. Students take placement tests prior to their enrollment at IBSH and are placed in classes corresponding to their relative level of fluency and familiarity with Chinese.

The extracurricular activities at IBSH are diverse; a wide range of activities are available for student participation. Student government, Key Club, InterAct, Track and Field, basketball, swimming, soccer, cheerleading, breakdancing, taekwondo, hip hop, policy debate, and Model United Nations are some of the student organizations present at IBSH. Multiple events are hosted for the IBSH students throughout the year by the student council and other clubs. School-wide events such as the NEHS Field Day and the School Anniversary also involve substantial student participation.

Wednesday
Every Wednesday, students are required to wear formal, yet very handsome, uniform to school throughout the entire day. Elemental School students are required to wear colored gym uniform based on their sex (Blue for males; Pink for females). Enrolling in Middle School, students switch out of their old uniforms and into a more sleek and handsome beige uniform button-up long sleeve shirt combined with a choice of navy blue pants or maroon skirt. More female students generally prefer the maroon skirt as the pants give off a more manly appeal. As the progression continues, students switch into a different colored uniform when enrolling in High School at NEHS. The High School uniform, although unattractive by color at first sight, is both comfortable and appealing. It features a pink button-up long sleeve shirt along with navy blue pants or skirts. Both long sleeve shirts and pants can also be ordered in their shorter alternatives, short sleeve shirts and shorts.

Every Wednesday students are also required to arrive precisely before or at exactly 7:40 am.

Every Wednesday, the Bilingual Department hosts a ceremony, popularly called the Flag Ceremony, which takes place from 7:40am to 8:00am. This tradition has long been taking place when the school was first opened. Every other Wednesday the Bilingual Elementary School students and the Bilingual "Middle School to High Scool" students takes turns in attending the Flag Ceremony. During this time the Bilingual Department honors the Taiwan country by singing the National Taiwan song and raising the flag to the top of the pole. The flag ceremoney takes place in literally the heart of NEHS. It is located around the small field right behind the entrance of the front gate. In front of the field stands a platform housing the giant Taiwan flag pole. Students are required to stand on the field throughout the entire ceremony.

Wednesday, or uniform day, is a very respectable day by representing the school's traditions. If there is ever a time when students arrive after 7:40am or are caught not wearing their uniforms (or tucking in their uniform shirts), they risk a chance of being assigned public service by the school's Disciplinarian, Min Yeh. Recently, public service has been removed and replaced with detention and tedious writing assignments. These writing assignments include writing your misdemeanors and methods to fix is in one sentence. Afterwards the sentence is required to be written many times (usually more than 100 times) all in one paper and turned into the first floor faculty office, which houses Min Yeh. Although a very tough disciplinarian, he is also a very handsome and kind man with a heart of gold. In the past Min Yeh forced a student to scrub the entire tennis court because of the student's poor action in deciding to write a prom message on the tennis court floor. What made it worse was that it had rained the same day. Little did the student know that the disciplinarian Min Yeh was secretly filming the entire cleaning process on video.

Cleanup Time (3:00pm)
Cleanup time takes place everyday from 3:00pm to 3:20pm. During this time, all students are assigned specific duties to take out, such as dumping out the food bucket, trash can, and recycle bins. Other duties include sweeping and mopping the floor, washing the blackboard, wiping off the counters, and various other chores taken out in the Public area. Wiping off the counters is considered to be the easiest and most relaxing job as a student may simply take a wet rag and wipe off the entire teacher's desk and counters in the time required to walk around the room. Clean up jobs that generally take place in the public areas are generally considered to be the most tedious and painful jobs; a combination of sweeping and bagging up leaves along with the constant swarms of mosquitoes attacks makes this job almost impossibly enjoyable. However, one may feel satisfaction knowing that they have just cleaned up one of the most difficult clean up areas.

Although most students consider clean up time simply just a chore, there is much more to it. Every week, clean up awards are announced to the class with the best clean up evaluation score. This helps to spice up the boring regular chores into something more competitive and fun. During Flag Ceremony, lots of glory is gained when the class clean-up monitor is asked to walk to the front stage of the school to accept the week's cleanest room certificate. -->

History
On March 23, 1982, Kwoh-Ting Li, the then Minister of the Executive Yuan, chaired a special meeting, during which the proposal of establishing National Experimental High School at the Science-based Industrial Park was formally approved by representatives from the Ministry of Education, National Science Council, academic and research institutions, and as well as universities in the neighborhood of the Science Park.

Later, in August 1983, National Experimental High School at the Science-based Industrial Park was formally founded. The first enrollments included one senior high class, three junior high classes, and three bilingual classes with one kindergarten class.