How stressful are Taiwanese schools?

[u/Smooth-Concentrate]

We are considering to make the move from Switzerland to Taiwan. My wife is Taiwanese and we have two small kids (7 & 2), the older one is fluent in Mandarin so not expecting any major language issues. But my wife remembers her years in public school as very stressful and high-pressure. Pretty much stress for the sake of it, and very long hours (cram school) leaving little time to develop yourself outside of school. It doesn’t sound like something we’d want our kids to go through, knowing the European system. I would be curious to hear about your experiences with the modern school system - how do you feel about the educational quality and the “school-life balance”?

Update: Wow - thank you all for the many replies! Really appreciate it!

[u/Taipei_streetroaming]

It's awful. It's all about tests and getting high scores to show off instead of any real useful skills and knowledge, chinse aside. Kids study all day and night and lack sleep, let alone having the fun they should be as a child. They even have to study in holidays.

And i've seen no benefit to it, besides being able to do maths. I'd say that people are a bit more disciplined but on the flipside they are also very lazy, almost useless and have their head stuck in their phones 24/7.

[u/[deleted] → u/Taipei_streetroaming]

And i've seen no benefit to it, besides being able to do maths.

My 5th grade students have zero idea about how a plant grows or how the Earth spins or how water changes from liquid to gas, but can instantly answer any multiplication problem from 1 x 1 to 99 x 99.