A Study of Student Unit Costs for Public Senior Secondary Education in Taiwan Hsiu-Wen Tseng Abstract This research adopts the methodology of literature analysis, documentary one and empirical regression one to explore the current student unit costs of public senior secondary schools and the relevant issues. The purposes of this study are (a) to analyze the developmental trend and the current status of educational expenditures allocation for education at all levels, (b) to explore the cost drivers of student costs for public senior secondary schools through regression analysis and construct a calculating model for student unit costs, and (c) to offer relevant institutes some specific suggestions as improvements for the allocation system of educational funds according to this model so as to develop the maximum function of public education funds. The main conclusions are obtained as follows: 1. In the recent ten years, there is a great fluctuation in the structure of education at all levels in our country and the educational expenditures have increased a great deal yearly. 2. The context of student unit costs should be composed of current expenditures and capital ones. The former are the basic resource of funds for maintaining the normal operation of school-affairs, so these could be referred as the equivalent of the basic needs for every school; the latter are the expenditures for facilities and construction. The expenditures for facilities are mainly the expenses for teaching which are directly beneficial to the quality of learning. 3. Through descriptive statistics, we find that the expenditures of construction constitute the majority of capital expenditures in public senior secondary education, so the ratio for the expenditures of facilities is relatively low. 4. The current expenditures of public senior secondary schools have great regularity, so they could be predict the amount by the best regression model composed of three main cost drivers, which are the amounts of teachers, classes and staffs. According to the results of our research above, we propose the following suggestions: 1. The current expenditures and capital ones should be allocated by different methods because of their different cost behaviors. 2. The current expenditures have great regularity, so this kind of expenditures could be calculated and allocated by a funding formula through general educational grants. 3. The capital expenditures have no certain regularity, so this kind of expenditures is not suitable to be predicted from a normal viewpoint. This should be separated from general educational grants and continuously allocated by the method of plan grants. Besides, the central government should formulate the specific standards for the facilities and construction of education at all levels as the references of examining the proposals for capital grants. 4. The central government should establish a data base of the fundamental teaching equipment and educational expenditures of education at all levels for educational administrative institutes, schools and outsiders to examine, supervise and proceed relevant researches. 5. The central government should revise the accounting system of public educational institutes and establish a independent accounting system for public schools in order to fulfill School based management and develop the concept of accountability and ability to establish the features of schools for school authorities.

The first purpose of this study was to validate a modified and personalised form of the College and University Classroom Environment Inventory (CUCEI) and then to use this instrument to examine the actual and preferred classroom environment perceptions of students and instructors at the senior secondary and post secondary levels. A third purpose was to examine students' attitude to their courses on three specific scales, namely, Satisfaction, Difficulty and Speed. A sample of 504 students and24 instructors from Canada and the Australian Capital Territory completed the CUCEI. The students also responded to an attitudinal questionnaire. Statistical analysis confirmed the reliability of the CUCEI. The Cronbach alpha reliability figures, using the individual student as the unit of analysis, ranged from 0.73 to 0.93 and from 0.76 to 0.94 for the actual and preferred versions respectively. Good alpha reliability figures were also apparent for instructor versions, ranging from 0.72 to 0.90 for the actual version and from 0.72 to 0.93 for the preferred version. When the two levels were compared, students at the higher level had a less favourable perception of their learning environment. Hardly any difference in perceptions was seen in the learning environment between male and female students. There were significant differences in the perceptions of the classroom environment by mature students. Mature students perceived task orientation and equity more favourably than did younger students. Senior secondary students were generally more satisfied with their science courses than post secondary students. There was no difference in their attitude to the speed of delivery of science courses. The sample of 24 instructors generally perceived their environment more favourably than did their students, however, senior secondary instructors viewed the learning environment more favourably ++ / than the instructors at the post secondary level. The study also suggests that instructors at the post secondary level are aware of the changes in students classroom environment and seem to take into account these changes. Qualitative data collected from class observations and student and instructor interviews complemented the quantitative findings of the study.