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Emerging Issues in EducationalReform in JapanKenneth K. WongPublished online: 18 Nov 2009.

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Requests for reprints should be sent to Kenneth K. Wong, Department of Leadership,Policy, and Organization, Box 514, Peabody College, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37203. E-mail: ken.wong @vanderbilt.edu

PEABODY JOURNAL OF EDUCATION, 78(4), 242–248Copyright © 2003, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Emerging Issues in Educational Reform in Japan

Kenneth K. WongDepartment of Leadership, Policy, and OrganizationPeabody College of Vanderbilt University

Public education in Japan is entering a new phase of accountability.Several reform efforts are designed to hold schools and other educationalservice providers more accountable for both their performance and theirclients’ preferences. More specifically, at the higher education level, thenational government has recently asked universities (particularly theirteacher training programs) to become more adaptive to persistent enroll-ment decline. At the prefecture and city government levels, political lead-ers seem more willing to be involved in educational reforms in order toraise student performance. Finally, principals and teachers are beginningto focus on mechanisms that would enable them to conduct ongoing self-evaluation of the effectiveness of their professional practices.

The three strands of emerging reforms that I describe can be conceptu-alized in terms of a framework of a new politics of accountability in Japan.The framework is defined by a continuum of the balance betweendemand- and supply-driven forces. Of the three strands of reform, effortsto restructure higher education are closely related to changing demands ofthe student-clients. In contrast, professional self-evaluation suggests thedominance of the service providers in shaping school priorities and prac-tices in the school community. Somewhere in between the demand-driven

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and the supply-dominant models is mayoral control, whereby electedpolitical leaders try to mediate the tension between demand and supply inschool reform.

In this article, I use the demand–supply continuum to highlight theemerging reforms in the Japanese educational system. My analysis isbased on 2 weeks of fieldwork in major urban districts and their prefec-tures in Nagoya, Osaka, and Tokyo. During late February and earlyMarch 2003, with the support of a fellowship from the Japan Society forthe Promotion of Science and a team of Japanese researchers led by Prof.Yoshimi Tsuboi, I was able to learn first-hand about various schoolimprovement programs that are currently initiated by local, prefecture,and national governments. I conducted extensive interviews with schoolofficials in the Mie Prefecture Board of Education, Tsu Senior High Schoolin Mie Prefecture, the Takahama City Board of Education, Tsubasa Ele-mentary School in Takahama City, the Osaka Prefecture Board of Educa-tion, Kawanishi Junior High School in Osaka, the Tokyo Prefecture Boardof Education, and the Shinagawa Ward Board of Education. I also inter-viewed representatives of the teachers union in Osaka and Tokyo. At sev-eral seminars on American school reform that I conducted, I was able togather additional insights into Japanese educational reform fromresearchers at the National Institute for Educational Policy Research inTokyo, the Center for American and British Studies at NanZan University,and the Aichi University of Education in Nagoya. Two educationalresearchers, Dr. Fukuyo Tomita and Eiko Tsuchida, provided translations.

Demand-Driven Reform: Higher Education Restructuring

Beginning in April 2004, the national government will graduallyreduce its direct financial support for higher education institutions. It isexpected that within a 6-year period, national funding will be signifi-cantly reduced from almost 100% currently. Universities and colleges areexpected to find new funding sources, including a combination of studenttuition, fees for services, and private and alumni sources. The number ofpublic 4-year institutions will be reduced from the current 99 to about 80during the next few years. There are currently 11 universities of educa-tion, but that number is likely to be reduced through consolidation.

Consistent with the anticipated shift in financial structure, the nationalgovernment plans to change public institutions into “independent admin-istrative corporations,” which will use their newly granted autonomy todevelop more marketable curriculum to compete for students and faculty(“Higher education in Japan,” 2003). Demand-driven reform is likely to

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change the way universities select their chief executive officer. Currently,university presidents are selected through a process of faculty nominationand faculty voting, namely driven by concerns of the service-provider fac-ulty members. For example, the current president at Aichi University waselected by a majority of the voting faculty. Starting next academic year, theselection of a president will go through an additional screening process.There will be a screening committee made up of various clientele groups,including alumni, representatives from each of the 88 boards of educationin the Aichi Prefecture, and representatives from private businesses,among others.

These changes in the financial and governance structure will have sig-nificant implications for teacher training programs in universities in thenext few years. Student enrollment at the elementary and secondary lev-els has persistently declined in the last 15 years, suggesting a weakerdemand for licensed teachers in the classroom. Consequently, fewer uni-versity students who earn a teaching degree are able to find permanentteaching jobs. For example, even the highly ranked programs at AichiUniversity have difficulty matching their graduates to teaching positions.A substantial percentage of graduates in Aichi University’s teacher educa-tion programs work for noneducational governmental agencies and pri-vate companies such as Toyota. Consequently, teacher-training programsare likely targets for university-wide restructuring in the next few years. Itis not unlikely that several colleges of education may be consolidated andstreamlined to address the reality of the job market.

From a research perspective, it would be important to document theimpacts of demand-driven reform on university curriculum and facultygovernance. It would be interesting, for example, to examine the kinds ofprograms that are terminated and consolidated for comparative advan-tages. Another issue is the extent to which universities bring about newmanagement strategies, such as outsourcing and innovative marketing, tocompete for student applicants. Equally important is the need to examinethe effects of these changes on the quality of university education in thenext few years.

Integrated Governance: Mediating Demand and Supplyat the Elementary and Secondary Levels

In my research on urban governance reform in the United States, I havedeveloped the concept of “integrated governance” (Wong, 2000). Thisterm describes the current transformation in the ways public schools aregoverned in America. Although most school districts remain autonomous

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from governors and mayors, an increasing number of large urban districtsare “taken over” by city hall (and some of these school boards are jointlyappointed by the mayor and the governor). In these districts of integratedgovernance, political accountability (through mayoral election and directappointment of school boards) and educational performance are “integrated” rather than completely disjoined from each other.

My notion of integrated governance seems applicable to educationalgovernance at the district level in Japan. With the exception of the years1948 through 1956, the mayor has enjoyed the authority to appoint thelocal school board. In recent years, mayoral control has gone beyond theappointment of school board members. Some mayors are willing to exer-cise their leadership on schooling policy in a more direct manner. Exam-ples are seen in two districts, Takahama City and Shinagawa Ward.

In Takahama City, a population of about 400,000, the mayor is exertingstronger leadership over the city’s board of education. Recently, themayor assigned top priority to implement various reform programs,which, range from early childhood to lifelong learning. He took over theprimary responsibility for providing social administration or lifelongeducational programs, including outsourcing the community-based edu-cational center to a private management organization. Under mayoralleadership, city hall (which exercises budgetary power) and the city boardof education (which controls school administration) established closeworking relationships. The mayor even suggests the hiring of qualifiedcandidates from outside the educational sector to serve as principals. Hisinfluence to open up the principal selection process is seen in Tsubasa Ele-mentary School in the city. The principal of the 630-student school wasselected out of seven candidates who applied for an open job announce-ment. Up to now, vacancy for principalship has not been announced foropen competition. Instead, in most districts, the principal associationdominates the selection process. In Tokyo, performance scores in the prin-cipal examination provide additional consideration in the selectionprocess.

Further, in Shinagawa Ward, a city of 323,000 people in the Tokyo Pre-fecture, the mayor recruits a trusted administrator to serve as the super-intendent. Furthermore, he introduces school choice in junior highschools (namely the equivalent of grades seven through nine in theUnited States). In an interview in January 2003, Mayor Kyuji Takahashipointed out, “Competition gives birth to hard work and effort, and inturn, leads to new development and growth” (Shinagawa City Office,2003). Beginning in the 2002 academic year, he has removed school dis-trict boundaries. Of the 2,066 students who entered seventh grade in thecity’s 18 junior high schools, 24% chose schools outside of their regular

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attendance boundary. At the same time, school choice in Shinagawa issomewhat restricted and does not follow a full market-like model. Forexample, each school is allowed a maximum of 30 seats in the seventhgrade for open enrollment. Schools that suffer from a significant declinein enrollment are not closed down by the city. Given the national impor-tance of this school choice program, it would be important to conductongoing research on its implementation.

Ongoing Self-Evaluation by School Site Personnelas a Supply-Side Reform Strategy

Public education in Japan, like its U.S. counterpart, faces ongoing chal-lenges for better services. Among the highly publicized challenges is bul-lying, even in elementary schools. Class disruptions are seen as reflectingpoor teacher quality even though the problems may be caused by a smallnumber of unruly students. At the same time, the Tokyo Teachers Unionfound that over 70% of high school students did not have adequate timeto rest given their academic pressure. Teacher burnout seems fairly com-mon in a large urban district such as Tokyo and Osaka. In other words,there are multiple reasons for teachers and principals to conduct ongoingself-evaluation so that they can better manage competing demands.

The Mie Prefecture leads the nation in designing and implementingschool self-evaluation. At the beginning of the 2002 academic year (April2002), the Mie Prefecture introduced the School Self Evaluation Model toall the schools. The professional-dominated model has four stages—plan-ning, doing, checking, and reforming. Through this ongoing process, theprincipal, teachers, counselors, support personnel, and perhaps the stu-dents are expected to engage in collaborative efforts to improve all aspectsof their school.

In Mie Prefecture, Tsu Senior High School is at the forefront of self-evaluation. At the beginning of the school year, teachers decide on thecurriculum and the way to deliver the instruction. Through feedbackfrom students and parents, the curriculum and instruction are revised forimprovement. Evaluations of the quality of teaching, however, are notidentified with individual teachers. In this regard, self-evaluation as areform model is different from the performance assessment standardsthat are implemented by the school boards. Self-evaluation results, in con-trast to the performance assessment, are not used by the principal forcompensation and employment recommendations.

An emerging issue of contention is who should determine the bench-marks and the instrument for gathering information on teacher evaluation.

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The prefecture seems to have granted a fair amount of power to the princi-pals so that they take the leadership in designing and implementing themultistage process. On the other hand, the teachers unions prefer an alter-native instrument, which gives more power to parents and teachers indetermining what kind of information to gather.

Another emerging issue is the use of self-evaluation information.Should it be published so that parents and the public can engage in theprocess? Would the school personnel benefit from the voices of parentsand the larger community? Or should the evaluation process remaininternal to professional educators within the school building? How muchvariation is there among schools in implementation of the self-evaluationmodel? These issues will be worth revisiting as more schools and districtsimplement self-evaluation.

An interesting alternative to the self-evaluation model is the perfor-mance-based incentive model of the private sector. In my visit to the Toyota Automobile Company, I learned about both individual and grouprewards. In each assembly plant, ongoing group evaluation on perfor-mance targets determines monthly salary for members of the workgroup. At the same time, individuals’ annual salary is evaluated basedon individual performance. The manager is responsible for motivatingthe work group and its members to improve performance. The manager’sown salary is based on a 4-point rating system (0 to 3). A rating of 3amounts to two bonuses to supplement the base annual salary. To gaugethe pace of work, a new worker is assigned to pair up with a veteranteam member. The latter assesses the former with gradual introduction ofadditional tasks until they reach the normal load. The evaluation of theveteran is based on support and guidance to the new member, therebyproviding an incentive in the process of mentoring. Above the workgroup is the team, which consists of three to four work groups and ismanaged by the chief leader. Above the chief leader is the manager. Themanager’s responsibility is to transmit “one’s own dream and passion tohis subordinates, to mobilize them, and to ensure full human realiza-tion,” according to a former manager, who is currently the publicrelations director of the company.

Conclusion

The Japanese education system is entering a critical phase of reform.The strands of reform that this article discusses are illustrative of the dif-ferential approaches at the national, prefecture, and local levels. Taken asa whole, the balance between demand and supply considerations is likely

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to shape the design and implementation of reform efforts in publicschools and universities. Given the role of these reforms in shaping thequality of education in Japan, it is important for the research communityto gather data on their institutional consequences.

References

Higher education in Japan, scandal on the campus. (2003, March 1). The Economist, p. 42. Shinagawa City Office. (2003, January 10). City News Shinagawa, p. 53.Wong, K. K. (2000). Chicago school reform: From decentralization to integrated governance.

Journal of Educational Change, 1(1), 97–105.

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