Report skirts key issues on education reform
Shigeru Nakanishi / Yomiuri Shimbun Senior Writer
With the government's Education Rebuilding Council's release of its second report on education reform, a question has arisen over whether the long-standing cram-free education policy will really be reviewed.
Will the five-day school week system be overhauled? According to the report, it will not. Instead, the report proposed that moral education be made a class subject, yet did not mention designating any score-based system or specialized teachers for it. Government-authorized textbooks would be used for the subject, but schools also should use a variety of other materials, the report said.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, to whom the report was submitted, praised it, saying, "It was written in a way very easy to understand."
But I consider it quite hard to understand, particularly regarding measures to improve academic abilities, which is one of the four main policy areas addressed.
The panel's first report, released in January, proposed the number of class hours at public schools be increased by 10 percent. The second report was meant to offer detailed measures to reform the so-called cram-free education policy.
But such measures cited in the second report all are already being implemented at schools, such as the use of summer vacations, the introduction of a 15-minute morning class and the creation of a seventh class made possible through a reduction in the length of each class.
As for Saturday classes, the report left the decision to boards of education and schools, saying, "Saturday classes should be made possible, if necessary, but the five-day school week is the basic system." The report, however, fails to give details on how to do so.
Public schools fully shifted to the five-day school system from the 2002 academic year. But schools can have classes on Saturdays under the discretion of each local government. Some high schools not only offer supplementary classes but also regular classes on Saturdays.
A big question is how to compensate teachers who work Saturdays but are no longer under a six-day work week system. The report failed to address this problem. But if even this issue were left to education boards and schools, the reform process on this particular issue could be seen as being chipped away.
The report does suggest that Saturday classes be used for complementary, expanded or comprehensive studies. But on this matter as well, discussion seems lacking. It is true that teachers alone cannot come up with reform plans, but teacher involvement is surely the key to improving comprehensive studies.
Criticism has been raised that Saturday classes are used too often as mere experience sessions and should have more connections with subjects.
A close look at the plan shows that its reasons for increasing class hours by 10 percent are ambiguous. It is said class hours in Japan are shorter than schools in other countries, and the report attached international comparison survey results from five years ago. But though class hours at primary schools, for example, are much shorter in Japan than in Italy and India, and slightly shorter than in Finland, they are actually longer than in South Korea, which ranks higher than Japan in international academic ability tests.
The international surveys also may not reflect actual situations, as criteria were set by central or local governments in each country. Comparison therefore should not be oversimplified. In Japan, statistics are based on statutory class hours set by the government. But these should be regarded as the minimum. There are surprisingly few people who are aware that actual class hours often exceed standard levels significantly. The 15-minute morning sessions that have been introduced at many schools also are not counted in the class hours.
Prof. Hideo Kageyama of Ritsumeikan University, one of the panel members, voiced strong opposition to the abolition of the five-day school week system even when the panel was finalizing the report. He argued that there are many cases overseas in which higher academic abilities are achieved with fewer class hours compared to Japan and that it would be wrong to increase class hours too easily. His remarks seem to suggest the weight should be put on the quality of study rather than quantity in reforming a cram-free education policy.
There are many parents of schoolchildren who think a review of the five-day school week system should be part of reviews of the cram-free policy. But the five-day system was introduced in stages over about a decade from 1992, starting with once a month. Internationally, the five-day system is the most common.
As the panel has a slogan to promote a societywide drive to enhance the influence of home and local communities in the education process, the abolition of the five-day school week system would contradict the slogan, as the increased burdens would be borne by schools.
Even before the Education Rebuilding Council was set up at the Cabinet Secretariat, the Central Council for Education, an advisory body to the education, science and technology minister, held discussions on measures for increasing class hours. The latest report in this sense is simply redundant.
If the five-day system were reviewed, it would affect almost
everybody in the nation. Taking this opportunity, in-depth discussions,
including those to overhaul the five-day system, should be held more openly.
(June 13, 2007)