Tainan City Completes Principal Seal Handover for 78 Officials in Record Time

Tainan City has achieved a remarkable feat in educational administration, completing the official handover of seals for 78 school principals in less than 10 minutes. The ceremony, held at Yongren Senior High School in Yongkang District, saw principals participating in batches, a testament to a meticulously planned and long-standing process.

The efficiency of the ceremony is the result of a unique system developed 16 years ago when Tainan County and City merged. At that time, over 200 principals needed to complete the handover, and the current process was conceived to ensure the entire ceremony could conclude within an hour. This allows principals ample time to return to their respective schools and manage subsequent administrative tasks.

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16 years ago, in the first year of the merger of Tainan County and City, the number of principals to be handed over exceeded 200. In order to allow the entire ceremony to end within one hour, so that principals could return to the appointed schools to handle subsequent matters, a set of procedures was conceived at that time that allowed every principal to hand over the seal without taking up too much time. This has been used to this day and is a characteristic of the annual principal handover in Tainan City, and it is widely praised.

Chen Xue-hua, a retired director from Fuxing Elementary School in Yongkang District, who has been instrumental in arranging the principals' handover for years, explained the system's ingenuity. The 78 principals were divided into five batches, with up to 16 individuals participating simultaneously in each batch. The handover itself takes less than two minutes per batch, ensuring a smooth and rapid conclusion.

The secret lies in a logical sequence: vacant school positions are listed, and seals are passed from retired principals to appointed ones, then sequentially among those being transferred, and finally to the newly appointed principals. This chain-like handover, organized into four or five batches, makes the entire process exceptionally swift. Each school also received a special seal bag to carry the seal back. This innovative approach has become a hallmark of Tainan's principal appointments and is widely praised for its effectiveness.

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Tainan City's annual number of principals participating in the handover is very large. To save time, all vacant schools are listed first, and retired principals hand over to transferred principals, who then hand over to the next transferred principal, and finally to the new principal, forming a series of handover combinations. As long as the logic is figured out, it is divided into 4 or 5 batches on average, and all handovers can be completed in less than 10 minutes.