Institute of International Education Department of Education

An Education Sector Diagnosis of Citizenship Education in

Japan

Assignment for the course Educational Planning

Tatsuhei Morozumi

(January 2015)

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Introduction ................................................................................................ 3 Aims and Objective ................................................................................... 4

Method ................................................................................................... 4 Limitation ............................................................................................... 4

Contextual Analysis ................................................................................... 5 Overviews of Japanese school system and its context ........................... 5

Fact and figures about today’s Japanese education ............................ 5 Education on Civics in Japanese educational system ......................... 6

After the war ................................................................................... 6 New decades ................................................................................... 6 Discussion over the definition of Citizenship Education in Japan . 7

Access and Equity .................................................................................. 9 Lower secondary school ..................................................................... 9 Upper secondary school ..................................................................... 9 Specialized Upper Secondary School ............................................... 10 National Center Test for University Entrance Examinations ........... 11 Non-formal Education ...................................................................... 11

Volunteer activity ......................................................................... 12 Internal Efficiency ................................................................................ 13 Quality of Citizenship Education ......................................................... 14

Output: National Center Test for University Admissions ................ 14 Output: International Civic and Citizenship Education Study ........ 15

Input: Teachers ................................................................................. 15 External Effectiveness of Education .................................................... 16

Young people’s voter turn out .......................................................... 16 Membership in Political Party .......................................................... 17 Young people’s willingness to take part in society .......................... 18

Cost and Finance .................................................................................. 19 Management ..................................................................................... 20

Priority problems and proposed measures ............................................... 21 Conclusion ............................................................................................... 23 References ................................................................................................ 25 Appendix .................................................................................................. 28

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Introduction After the PISA shock in 2003, when the top ranking of the Japanese students plummeted, the Japanese government revised the educational development so called “relaxed and lighter curriculum”. Whether it helped or not, Japan got back on top of the list in reading and science performance at the results of PISA 2012 (OECD, 2014a). The report states among the OECD countries, Japan is ranked second in mathematics and first in both reading and science. Education Minister Hakubun Shimomura stated that it is thanks to the educational revision, which increased the number of hours in the classroom and partly implementation of new curriculums. (December 2013). From an international viewpoint, one can say that the Japanese educational system functions fairly well, however it is not as good as it is in reality. For instance, Japanese young people rarely exercise their political rights. Lack of Japanese young people’s political involvement has been discussed through decades, yet things have not changed significantly to this point. Why does well-educated young people not take part in the political life? What difference can education make for this situation? Emergence of Citizenship Education carries a great promise for educators to combat these subjects. However, it also causes confusion in the classroom due to its ambiguity and less connection to pre-existing subjects.

Hence, this paper will look into Citizenship Education in the Japanese educational systems by doing an educational diagnosis as well as trying to spot the relevancy of the current education on citizenship.

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Aims and Objective This paper deals with educational diagnosis on Citizenship Education in the Japanese educational system. The main focus on the paper will be to implement educational diagnoses with quantitative approach on this arena. Due to the data availability, it focuses mainly on formal education, that is to say, civic and Citizenship Education in lower and upper secondary school but not in elementary school and university. If possible, foci will also include informal fields such as outside of school initiatives. The contents of the paper will be as follow. The firs part of the paper describes contextual analysis with relevant statistical data such as demography, political context, a Net enrolment rate etc. The second part, analysis on key educational aspects will be implemented. And in the third one, there will be priority problems and measures to improve. Conclusion will include reflection on how well the author considers ESD techniques.

Method The paper uses ‘Analytical Framework of an Educational Sector Diagnosis (ESD) made by International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP) as a methodology. (IIEP UNESCO, n.d.) The framework being used will examine educational systems in Japan based on its context with multiple aspects of educational sectors such as: context, access, internal efficiency, equity, quality, external effectives, finance and management. Five Priority problems and suggested measurements will be presented with the framework of the ESD.

Limitation The main limitation of this paper is lacking or missing of the data owing to the ambiguity of definition of Citizenship Education. Even though the definition and focus will be discussed in coming part, the majority of sources is not coming from Citizenship Education itself due to the fact that it is not introduced as an official subject in Japanese schools. Thus, the statistics presented in this paper will be coming from varieties of sources but, at least, Citizenship Education related topics. In addition, the subjects: Period of Integrated Study, Moral Education, social pedagogy and extra-curricular activities — will be touched briefly though — will not be the main focus of the analysis of Citizenship Education on this paper. Another limitation is lack of societal contexts data, such as child poverty rate, young people’s unemployment rate, and number of NEET or Hikikomori due to it is not the main focus of this paper.

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Contextual Analysis Overviews of Japanese school system and its context

Fact and figures about today’s Japanese education The first part of the paper starts with a summary overview of the main feature and trends and the contexts of Japanese school systems. According to the World Bank, in 2013, Japan holds $4.920 trillion of GDP, which is a third place ranking in the world. Total population is 126. 1 million with a slight annual population decrease with the figure -0.2 (World Bank, 2013). Japanese unprecedented aging population was brought by long life expectancy (83 years) and low fertility rate. Japanese educational arena possesses high Net enrolment rates to both in primary education (99.64%) and in lower secondary education (99.2%) due to the compulsory education. Upper secondary school, which starts from the age of 16, also possesses high Net enrolment rate with 95.6%. (2012) And a 72.4% of the pupils proceed to post-secondary school with general

education while 19.1% go on to specialized upper secondary schools. The remaining part advances to other specialized and integrated schools. After the graduation of the secondary school, 55.1% of students enroll to university or junior college, while 16.8% go on to specialized training college (Graph 1). New graduates on a university level entering employment represents 63.9%, junior college 70.8%, upper secondary school 16.8% and lower secondary 0.4%.

Graph 1

Source: (MEXT, n.d.)

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Education on Civics in Japanese educational system

After the war Japanese educational systems conduct “Social Studies” in primary and lower secondary school as well as “Geography and History” and “Civics” in upper secondary school. According to the Fundamental laws of Education that replaces the version of 1945 under the revision in 2006, the goal of education is:

“ Article 1. Education aims to complete the character of people, and resolves that it must raise citizens having the necessary qualities to make up a peaceful and democratic country and society, healthy in mind and body.“

Along with this, the purpose of Social Studies and Civics is also to cultivate “competence of civics”, that is to say, citizenship (MEXT, 2006). After World War 2 and the occupation by the U.S, Japanese government set the Social Studies as a subject by implanting the American version of it. Article 14 of the fundamental law of education states the purpose of the political education as: “To cultivate citizens of good judgment, necessary political education shall be deeply respected in education. “ However, Isozaki (2011, p. 260) has argued that lack of efficiency and relevancy of Social Studies in lower secondary school and of Civics in upper secondary school by pointing out its cramming approach. He also mention the lack of educated teacher in the fields and systems regarding focus studies, that is to say, study methods to be inclined towards only social components of the system but with less praxis. Another reason, which is well known in Japanese educational world, is that the Article 14 – 2 of fundamental law of education, prohibits school to either support or oppose particular political party, which hinders teachers to teach political education in school. (ISOZAKI Ikuo, 2011, p. 260)

New decades Since the 1990’s Citizenship Education, which is highly prioritized in European country as a priority policy, has been spotted in Japanese educational arena as an instrument to cast a doubt on the methods of pre-existing Social Studies and Civics. In 2002, the United Kingdom has made the decision on installing Citizenship Education into the National Curriculum as a compulsory subject for students aged from 11 to 16. The trends in the Western world brought an enormous impact on Japanese society all the way across the overseas. In 2006, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) published a report named “Report - Research Group on Citizenship Education and People’s Success in Economic Society” which is known as one of the impetus to raise attention to Citizenship Education in Japan. (METI, 2006). The incorporation of Citizenship Education is hindered by the new standards of learning such as “Zest for living” which is close to the competence that is required for Citizenship Education. Hashimoto raised a point that decentralization also helped the installation of Citizenship Education (Hashimoto, 2013).

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Despite the “declaration of the Citizenship Education” by METI, they have only taken initiatives in implementing Career Education as a basic education for adults. Multiple ministries incorporated Career Education in 2003, which is more oriented to vocational education and the student’s own career by deploying Career Education Coordinator who’s main task is helping young peoples’ transition from school to employment. Nevertheless MEXT cooperated with METI to install Career Education into schools, they partly implemented Citizenship Education in only a few selected schools. It is only two elementary school in Tokyo and Kyoto that have implemented it from 2008 to 2010 (MEXT, 2012b). In 2010, a Vision for Children and Young People is issued by the Cabinet Office, which stipulates provision of education for young people’s participation to society, promotion of Citizenship Education and ensuring the opportunities for children and young people to express their view on the basis of Convention on the Rights of Child. Under this provision, Citizenship Education is included in a entry pronouncing “Education for formation of society and participation of society (Citizenship Education)” (Cabinet Office, 2014b).

Discussion over the definition of Citizenship Education in Japan Jiro Hasumi (2012) states that today’s Citizenship Education in Japan faces confusion of its definition and of its lack of relevance with existing Japanese education for Civic. The purpose of Japanese Social Studies and Civics is to cultivate ko-u-mi-n-teki-shi-shi-tsu (公民的資質 ), which literally means “competence to be civic” that nearly holds the same meaning to “citizenship”. Nitta (2006) cast questions on how “competence to be civic” is defined in the curriculum with analysis of its development of discourse over the Civic and Citizenship Education in Japan. Yet there is no clear integration between “competence to be civic” and “citizenship”. Since it is not the purpose to explore this topic, this paper will not further examine or discuss its definition. Still, it is necessary to identify what kind of Citizenship Education this paper will deal with.

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Table 1

Source: (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, 2006)

Table 1 describes different types of Citizenship Education which is categorized by place and form of education created by METI (2006). According to the study, Citizenship Education is carried out in different place with different forms such as holding Mock Elections or workshops, volunteering, being involved in student or community councils, running youth centers etc. This is due to the point that Citizenship Education is characterized by not only formal education but also by non-formal education. The difference between the two is formal education is the education performed in school whereas non-formal education is done not in school but within the community, home as well as social pedagogical institutions (METI, 2006). Although the research group put emphasis on the non-formal aspect of Citizenship Education, this paper will mainly look at the formal education aspect due to the limitation of data availability and the purpose of the educational sector diagnose. Specifically, the place will be mainly “school” and form of education will be “knowledge-acquisition learning”. Some sections will include data from the non-formal education sector. Citizenship Education with the form of knowledge-acquisition learning is performed under several convectional subjects in the classroom; Social Studies in elementary and lower secondary school, Geography and History or Civics in high school, Moral Education, Period of Integrated Study and special activities such as the student council, club activities and school events. Based on this categorization, the next section will deal with the educational analysis from key aspects of the educational systems.

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Access and Equity This section of the paper will look into the access and equity of the Citizenship Education in the formal education. As stated in the former chapter, the access to the formal education in school is fully covered in Japan. By lower secondary school, the Net enrolment rate is nearly 100% (99.64% in elementary; 99.2% in lower secondary). Even upper secondary school holds a Net enrolment rate of 95.6% (MEXT, 2012a). The questions to be asked in this section will be “How much time does pupils spend on the Citizenship Education related subjects in school”, “What is the ration of credits spent on Citizenship Education in school subjects?”

Lower secondary school According to the definitions discussed in the above section, Citizenship Education in lower secondary school is performed under the subjects of: Social Studies, Moral Education, Period of Integrated Studies and Special Activities. Graph 2 illustrates how many hours are spent on subjects in lower secondary school, retrieved from new curriculum guideline (MEXT, 2009). The total hours spent on each subject in lower secondary school is 1015 hours for each year. Within the amount of time, 10% are spent on Social Studies, Moral Education 4%,

Period of Integrated studies 5% and Special Activities is 4%. In total, it adds up to 23% of overall hours of education in lower secondary school. That is to say, 23% of the time used in the school is related to some sort of subject of Citizenship Education. To be sure the contents of each of the above subjects cannot to be fully equal to Citizenship Education, however it is notable to look at how much time is possibly spent for Citizenship Education.

Upper secondary school

Graph 2

Source: (MEXT, 2009b)

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Unlike lower secondary school, sociological studies are divided into two subjects in upper secondary school: “Geography and History”, “Civics”. Thus, Citizenship-Education related subjects are listed: “Geography and History”, “Civics” and “Period of Integrated Study”. The time spent on this field adds up to 19% of ratio in total number of credits (Graph 3). Moral Education is not set as a

subject in upper secondary school. Furthermore, MEXT added that it is done within the subject of Civics and Special Activities (MEXT, 2009a). Special Activities is also not included in the graph due to that it is not a course of subject but regarded as extra-curricular activities.

Specialized Upper Secondary School What about students in specialized upper secondary school? Do they also have access to major civics wholly? According to the report written by MEXT, discrepancies can be seen in several courses of subjects. Table 2 shows the difference in installation of the course between General Education and Specialized Education in upper secondary school. Figures described in the table are only retrieved from respective school year, which holds the highest installation rate comparing to other grades. For instance, Politics and Economics are carried out in 73% of third grade in the upper secondary school, while it is installed only in 24% of third grades in the specialized upper secondary school. The differences between installation rate of Ethics in General Education and Specialized upper secondary school is 28%. These figures show that there is limited access to the citizenship-related subjects between different types of schools.

Graph 3

Source: Mext, 2009

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Installation rate of the course (General Education and Specialized upper secondary school) Table 2

Subject Course General Education upper secondly school

Specialized upper secondary school

History and Geography

World History A 41% in 2nd grade 47%% in 2nd grade

World History B 70% in 3rd grade 9% in 3rd grade Japanese History A

32% in 2nd grade 28% in 3rd grade

Japanese History B

85% in 3rd grade 10% in 3rd grade

Geography A 29% in 2nd grade 34% in 1st grade Geography B 62% in 3rd grade 7 % in 3rd grade

Civics Contemporary Society

62% in 1st grade 44% in 1st grade

Ethics 37 % in 3rd grade 9% in 3rd grade Politics and Economics

73% in 3rd grade 24% in 3rd grade

Source: MEXT http://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/shingi/chukyo/chukyo3/028/siryo/06081106/002.htm ※ Listed figures are only retrieved from respective school year, which holds the highest installation rate comparing to other grades

National Center Test for University Entrance Examinations In addition to limited access in specialized upper secondary school, same discrepancy can be found in another statistic. It is well known that the Japanese high school has a strict standardized-paper test, called the National Center Test for University Admissions, which is only annually held at the last years of the upper secondary school and is the main thresholds to top-ranking universities. In 2014, 42.1% of high school students (including all type of post secondary school) applied to take the test (SUNDAI, 2014). Students who are expected to finish the last grade of high school are eligible to take the test. They can chose which subjects they will take according to which university or which type of major they will proceed. According to the National Center for University Entrance Examinations (2014), students who applied to take the History and Geography is 70.5%, whereas students who chose Civics only adds up to 38.6%. This is due to the fact that the majority of university only requires students to take History and Geography but Civics. Even though students do take the civics and acquired enough knowledge to graduate high school, this difference may affect motivation of pupils to study civics as well as how much time spent on learning civics.

Non-formal Education METI defines Citizenship Education as composed not only by formal education but also of non-formal education such as volunteer activity, Mock Election, workshop in social pedagogical center. (METI, 2006) The section below will try to illustrate the number of pupils involved in non-formal education.

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Volunteer activity According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, the number of people who engage in volunteer activity has increased significantly. In 2011, the overall population who were involved in disaster volunteering1 was nearly 4 million three hundred seventeen, that has tripled from 2006. (Ministry of Internal Affirs and Communications, 2013). Especially, the number has increased with students from primary school to university thoroughly. Graph 4, which depicts ratio of students who did disaster volunteering in the last year by level of school clearly show the increase (Ministry of Internal Affirs and Communications, 2013).

Source: (Ministry of Internal Affirs and Communications, 2013) Additionally, there are some post-secondary schools in Japan that admits volunteer activity or job experience. The initiative started from 1998 and a number of schools, which incorporates the systems, have increased. Yet, the number of school is limited. According to the MEXT, there are 504 high schools that accept student volunteering activities or job experience; in other words, students who volunteer are only admitted as credits in less than 10% of whole post secondary school in Japan (MEXT,2012a).

1 1 Disaster volunteer is a sort of need-base volunteer activity such as in response to

Graph 4

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Mock Election Mock Election is another type of Citizenship Education listed by METI in

the table 1. Mock Election is an election organized for educational purpose, typically perfumed in school along with the real election. In Japan, the government is not taking initiative to conduct Mock Election in school but the Mogi Senkyo Suishin Network that get sported from the government, and offer the opportunity to schools. Corresponding to the general election in December 2014, a number of schools took part in this Mock Election program. According to their report, 42 schools (1 elementary school, 8 lower secondary schools, 31 upper secondary schools and 2 universities) participated in the election and 8,117 ballots were casted (Mogi Senkyo Suishin Network, 2014). Obviously, it is insufficient. The total number of schools in Japan is 44,142 (excluding kindergarten and nursery). That is to say, only about 0.1% of schools took part in the Mock Election(MEXT,2012a).

Internal Efficiency A second aspect of educational diagnosis is internal efficiency. It is assessed by examining not only time and resources needed for the pupils to invest but also the flow of students such as rate of transitions, promotion, dropouts, truancy and repetition. One of the biggest problem Japanese education system possess is the dropouts and absence rate. According to the Cabinet Office (2014b), the number of absentee pupils generally continues to be flat in elementary school and upper secondary school compared to lower secondary school where the number has been increasing since the 1990’s. In 2012, the number of truant pupils in elementary school was 21,243 (sharing 0.31% of all pupils at same level), 91,446 (2.56%) in lower-secondary level and 57,664 (1.72%) in the upper secondary level. The number of dropouts, which is closely connected to grade repetition, is now decreasing in upper secondary level. The number increased during the 1990’s but then started to decrease after 2002. In 2012, the number of dropouts in the post secondary level was 51,781 that share 1.5% of all students attending high school. MEXT reported that 73.4% of dropout students gave the reason of dropping out as grade repetition. (MEXT, 1992) Unfortunately, there is no data available on repetition rate in compulsory school level but it is well recognized that Japanese educational system at this level do not apply repetition to pupils despite the fact that the education law stipulate the consideration of repetition in compulsory school (Toshihiko Maita, 2012). In the context of the Citizenship Education, it is significantly important for those who dropped out or became truant to have equal access towards the Citizenship Education, even outside of the school. Since Citizenship Education matches well with non-formal education, there is a possibility that these kinds of children can get help though community based organizations such as youth centers. However, there is no such data that describes how many dropout pupils or truant students are offered Citizenship Education outside of school.

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Quality of Citizenship Education One of the difficult challenges for Citizenship Education is how to measure its achievement based on its qualitative (rather than quantitative) educational approach and the fact that it highly depends on the contexts. This section will be divided into two categories: output and input.

Output: National Center Test for University Admissions Educational diagnoses use output of quality of education to assess what kind of knowledge students gained though the core study curriculum. The first measure would be the achievements of National Center Test for University Entrance Examinations. Graph 5, is retrieved from National Center for University Entrance Examination (“Result of National Center Test for University Admissions in 2014,” 2014). As is shown in the graph ~, the majority of average score of Geography and History and Civics from the 2013 to 2014 rose. However, it varies in each year depending on the quality of the inquiry and. What is more, National Center Test is done only by written examination that is not the best means of Citizenship Education as is declared by METI. (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), 2006) Isozaki criticized that the Japanese education on Civics is heavily subjected to limited-study fields and its cram approach. (ISOZAKI Ikuo, 2011)

Unfortunately, there is no rigid measurement of achievements of Citizenship Education in Japan presently. It might be due to the lack of history and accumulation of Citizenship Education. Although the new curriculum guideline from 2009 clearly states

Graph 5

Source: National Center for University Entrance Examination, 2014

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that Moral Education, which can be also one of the core subjects of Citizenship Education, will not be evaluated with numbers (MEXT, 2009b). Japan Citizenship Education Foundation (JCEF) is now discussing setting evaluation measurement of Citizenship Education (JCEF, 2014).

Output: International Civic and Citizenship Education Study Another type of data this section can deal with is a study conducted by Kenji Tanahashi that assesses students’ competence of citizenship by using International Civic and Citizenship Education Study, which is studied by IEA (Kenji Tanahashi, 2010). The test was conducted for pupils in the third year of the lower secondary school in the 7 districts of Japan with the help of local researcher. Sadly, the original data they have collected are not available. However, here are some of the results that they shared publicly (Low-Related Education Forum, 2010) . Here are some of these. <Knowledge for citizenship>: Knowledge for citizenship asks students about its principles, divided into Law and Politics part. The percentage of correct answer in the Law section was 79%, while the Politics part was 69%. The percentage of correct answer is high (90%) for the questions that can be solved only with memorized knowledge but it was low (52%) for the inquiry that require using knowledge in order to interpret. <Interests and Activity in Politics>: Japanese children are interested in politics, holding a 5th place in the world. The lowest was Finland, followed by Sweden and the U.K. The source of information of politics is 95% coming from TV (the highest in the world), followed by 70% from newspapers. The attitude toward participation to the politics is low which is same level as international average. <Views on opportunities for civil participation in classroom and school>: Students who answered that “I can say any opinion even if it is different from the teachers’ at social science class” share 67% for international average, whereas it is only 28% for Japanese pupils. The results shows to what extent Japanese pupils gain the competence of “good” citizens, being able to answer “correct” questions without thinking, being very interested in politics, being informed by only TV and being calm during the class. Due to the close connection to the external effectiveness, this point will be discussed in the priority problem and recommendation section.

Input: Teachers Another aspect that educational diagnose can look at is the input of the quality of the education for teachers, textbooks and curriculum. One of the points that have been argued about teachers is the quality of teaching. Isozaki pointed out that Japanese teachers are swamped with not only their assigned class but with other work such as extra-curricular activities, coaching club activities, administrative work and preparation (ISOZAKI Ikuo, 2011). According to the OECD’s survey called Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS), Japanese teachers works 53.9 hours per week, which is the highest figures in 34 OECD member countries. This is significant when comparing with average work hour among OECD countries, which is 38.3 hours. Time spent on extracurricular activities, such as coaching student clubs, came to 7.7 hours per week in Japan, compared with 2.1 for the OECD overall (OECD, 2014b). This situation surrounding the teachers end up in a cramming approach by just letting students memorizes knowledge on politics with less practical activities.

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External Effectiveness of Education Assessing the relevance of the output in relation to the socio-economic needs at large is crucial for educational diagnoses, especially in the Citizenship Education arena because achievements of Citizenship Education can be measured more with other types of assessment rather than educational assessment.

Young people’s voter turn out One can say that one of the most rigid and accurate statistics related with

Citizenship Education is the voter turn out rate. Crick Report - well known as a document that promoted introduction of Citizenship Education in the United Kingdom – also

mentioned about lack young people’s exercise of voting rights. (Crick, 1998) Graph 6 shows the final turn out results of the national election held in July 2013 in Japan, which ended up in the third lowest turnout (52.5%) in Japanese history of education since 1945. The graph clearly depicts a significant low participation in voting. Only 33.37% of young people aged 20-29 casts a ballot, whereas 67.56% of seniors aged 60 to 69 voted at the same time. Interestingly enough, this result is nearly close to that of upper house of parliament of Japan (Association for Promoting Fair Election, 2014).

Turn out of national election for lower house in 2013 by age in Japan.

Source: Association for Promoting Fair Election, 2014

Graph 6

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Membership in Political Party World Value Survey implemented in 2010-2014 analyses the figures of young people’s involvement of political party in Japan and Sweden. Graph 8 shows how many

young people aged up to 29 are involved in political parties. As the figure show, clearly most of young people are not a member of the political party both in Japan and Sweden. However, it is noteworthy that while less than 1% of Japanese young people are inactive or active members of the political party, nearly 7% of young Swedish are inactive members and 2.7% of them hold an active membership.

Source: World Value Survey Wave 6 (2010-2014)

Graph 7

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Young people’s willingness to take part in society

According to a repot published by the Cabinet Office, young people aged 13 to 29 who have willingness to take part in social issues in order to improve the society is 44.3% in Japan (Cabinet Office, 2014b). This White Paper on Children and Youth compares the young people’s conscious toward society between multiple countries such as South Korea, U.S, the U.K, Germany, France and Sweden. The highest is Germany and the lowest is Japan in this survey. (Graph~) Another figure from the same report states that the share of young people 13 to 29 years old that feel they can change the society is 30.2 % in Japan. The highest is U.S and the lowest is again, the Japanese youth. (Graph 9)

44.3 60.4 64.3 57.1

76.2 50.9 52.9

0 20 40 60 80

100

Young people who have willingness to take part in social issue in order to imrove the society

(aged 13-29)

※ Total percentage of people who "agree" and "somewhat agree" to the opinion: "I am willing to take part in social issue in order to make society better".

30.2 39.2

52.9 45 52.6 44.4 43.4

0 20 40 60

Young people who feel they can change the society (aged 13-29)

※Total percentage of people who "agree" and "somewhat agree" with "I may change the society by my involvement"

Graph 8

Graph 9

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Cost and Finance This section will deal with cost and financial aspects of Citizenship Education in order to determine the relevancy of the allotted resources. According to the OECD, total expenditure on education as a percentage of GDP is 3.6%, which is the same portion as previous years That is the lowest percentage within comparable 30 countries (OECD, 2012). Sum of the percentage of expenditure on education in lower secondary school and upper secondary school shares 29.4% in 2010, while expenditure on social education – which is also very important actor of Citizenship Education- is 7.2%. Expenditure on social education (or pedagogy) from the municipality has been steadily decreasing yearly ever since 1996 (MEXT, 2014). Regarding Citizenship Education, there is no data available describing how much costs and resources has been spent on Citizenship Education within the secondary school. In 2010, government established Vision for Children and Youth following provision of the 2009 Act on the Promotion of Development and Support for Children and Young People. The child and youth policy requested 741,026 million yen from the 2015 budget. However, the total amount of budget they requested for Citizenship Education was 159 million yen, which only shares 0.021% out of the total budget they requested (Cabinet Office, 2014a). Furthermore, the 159 million yen is allotted to promotion for tax education under the name of Citizenship Education. Table 3 retrieved from the budget plan in 2015 states there is no requested budget for active and corporative learning for problem solving (Cabinet Office, 2014a). Table 3

Initial budget for 2014

Requested budget for 2015

Promotion of education for formation and participation to society (Citizenship Education)

Promotion of tax education (National Tax Agency)

144 159

Promotion of active and corporative learning for problem-solving (MEXT)

0 -

Ensuring opportunities for children and youth to express opinion

Source: (Cabinet Office, 2014a)

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Management Citizenship Education is performed differently depending on the agency, level of education, as well as local NGO. Taking a look at the national policy level, ministries involved in Citizenship Education are MEXT, MITI, Ministry of Justice, National Tax Agency, Financial Service Agency, Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Consumer Affairs Agency, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Defence and Cabinet Office(Cabinet Office, 2014b). The Cabinet Office is responsible for the implementation of child and youth policy under the Vision for Child and Youth (2010), which includes a policy for Citizenship Education. They assign the Committee for Cabinet Office Promotion of Development and Support for Children and Young People as a monitoring group. The Cabinet Office elects the members from a variety of professionals, professors, researchers, social workers, teachers and young people. Annually, they hold meeting to evaluate the implementation of child and youth policies. However, Citizenship Education is only a portion of child and youth policy, as it is pointed out in the finance section, it is dispersed among many agencies and actors. Thus, it can be overlooked by the monitoring committee easily become less prioritized. At local praxis level, Citizenship Education is implemented by different level of schools, social pedagogical agencies, local NPO, community-based NGO etc. Although, some local initiative, for instance Japan Citizenship Education Forum, is trying to initiate the fields by networking practitioners and researchers all over Japan. Yet, no integrated agency for Citizenship Education, which is accountable for implementation and monitoring, can be found at the present.

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Priority problems and proposed measures Based on the analysis in the previous chapter, this section will present priority problems and proposed measures in line with Educational Sector Analysis. Five priority problems will be addressed and the proposed measure will be discussed along its impact, acceptability, affordability and feasibility. It is also outlined in table 4 and 5 in appendix. Problem 1: Incoherence with pre-existing subject One of the most discussed problems of Citizenship Education in Japan is the argument on introduction of Citizenship Education itself. Lots of scholars and researchers as well as teachers and practitioners have discussed the installation of Citizenship Education over the decades. Jiro Hasumi (2012) points out that today’s Citizenship Education in Japan faces confusion of its definition and of its lack of relevance with pre-existing subjects such as Social Studies, civics, Period of Integrated Study, Moral Education, political education, career education, social pedagogy etc. This confusion may affect the difficulty to set an indicator of competence of citizenship and difficulty to frame relevant policy and conduct practices. Recommendation Thus the suggested recommendation is to definite the definition of Citizenship Education in order to unite citizenship-related subjects. If it will not be integrated, incorporating Citizenship Education into existing subjects will be another option. In fact, Citizenship Education is possibly done within the existing subjects or framework, that is the point made by several discussions (METI, 2006) (ISOZAKI Ikuo, 2011). This will benefit policy makers and practitioners to comprehend what the citizenship is and reduce confusion. When discussed, some teachers and scholars in already existing subjects may counter. However, it would be integrated slowly since Citizenship Education is not far from existing subjects. Combined with this, assigning agency to offer informative opportunities of Citizenship Education to practitioner and policy maker will be another advice. By doing that the actors will be able to perform relevant policy and practice. In total, feasibility is high due to the existence of such opportunities hosted by local NGO, and governments’ formulation of Citizenship Education in multiple policies. Problem 2: Limited measurement to assess competence of citizenship Evaluating competence of citizenship is one of the biggest challenges that the Japanese education faces. This is partly it is because there are less studies of assessing the competence in Japan. In terms of evaluation, the fact that the new curriculum guidelines from 2009 clearly states that Moral Education will not be evaluated with numbers hamper the evaluation of qualitative subject (MEXT, 2009b). This results in a lack of the statistical measurable data of citizenship competence as well as discrepancy between outcome of some studies and existing societal dataset. For instance, a study done by Kenji Tanahashi, examining students’ competence of citizenship by using International Civic and Citizenship Education Study, showcase that “Japanese children’s interest in is placed 5th in the world. The lowest was Finland, followed by Sweden, and the U.K.”.

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Interestingly enough, this finding contradicts what the White paper on Child and Youth (2105) says, which presented young people’s willingness to take part in social issue in order to improve the society with Japan’s lowest figures among developed countries. Furthermore, young people’s voter turn out rate is significantly lower compared to Sweden (Morozumi, 2014b). Why does children who are not interested in politics not take part in elections? It is the result from lack of accumulation of studies. Recommendation Therefore, proposed recommendation will be simply 1; taking part in International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCE) 2016 which is organized by IEA, 2; Implement national level survey to assess pupils’ competence of civics with Japanese original indicators. This will help researcher and policy makers as well as teachers to grasp the pupils’ competence of citizenship. The first suggestions will enable to compare it in an international scope. The second suggestion is made based on the need to be culturally contextualized into Japanese civil society for the sake of relevant and accurate evaluation. Feasibility to join the ICCE is high because of the low participation fees but it will take time to implement a Japanese original survey of Citizenship Education without foundations of it, though it is highly depending on scale and quality. Problem 3: Less resource allocation on non-formal sector METI stressed the effectiveness of non-formal education when carrying out Citizenship Education (METI, 2006). In addition to it, the number of students involved in volunteer activity has increased considerably over the decades. However, Mock Election is implemented in less than 0.1% of all schools due to the lack of resource and support from the government. In Sweden, Mock Election (Skolval) is conducted on a national scale with the full support of the government, which may be a part of the reason why students vote (Morozumi, 2014a). Recommendation Hence, the suggestion will be expanding the implementation of Mock Election to a national scale with the help and support from the government. Although Mock Election is just a part of Citizenship Education, it directly has an effect on young people’s participation to elections that will be thresholds of political life. Regarding acceptability, even though there will be needs of teaching politics along with lowering the legal age of voting, teachers has been apt to avoid teaching politics in the classroom. This is due to the presence of Article 14 – 2 of the fundamental law of education, prohibiting schools to either support or oppose a particular political party, which hinders teachers to instruct politics in the classroom (ISOZAKI Ikuo, 2011, p. 260). It does make sense to have such an article but the lack of understanding and instruments for teachers of political education will hamper holding Mock Election in schools. Moreover, it will cost a great deal if a Mock Election will be expanded into a national scale considering the number of schools and pupils. Thus, it will not be tangible in the short run. Problem 4: Monitoring system Multiple agencies in different levels perform Citizenship Education in different means but without an integrated-national agency. Although the Cabinet Office holds a

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monitoring committee for national child and youth policies – that includes Citizenship Education -, it is not monitoring only for Citizenship Education, which results in overlooking prioritization of Citizenship Education. As well as national level, local level lacks integrated-agency for conducting Citizenship Education in practice. Recommendation Establishing Citizenship Education focused advisory council for monitoring the policy and coordination between related-agencies will help improve relevancy of policy and practice. Feasibility is highly depending on if the government put priority on Citizenship Education among other policy areas. However, as soon as it will be put in the first place, it will not be feasible. Problem 5: Quality of teachers and practitioner There are several schools that incorporate citizenship as subjects and develop their own curricular in Japan (MIZUYAMA Mitsuharu, 2010). Still, the method being used for Citizenship Education is limited and not permeated in masses. It is partly because it is not introduced as a subject officially but because of teachers’ capacity to instruct Citizenship Education. Less teacher are majoring in political science at a university level and lack of time for developing teaching skills and pedagogy being used in civic class is inclining only to knowledge-acquisition are pointed out by Isozaki (2011). OECD’s report pointed out Japanese teacher’s time spent on extra-curricular and administrative work is by far the highest within the OECD countries. Recommendation The first priority in order for teachers to develop quality is to ensure the time and space to learn educational method of Citizenship Education. Reducing administration and extra-curricular work will enable teachers to spend more time on training or learning opportunities. However, it is true that a lot of teachers became teachers because they want to be a couch of a club activity and devote themselves to it. Also, overworking culture in whole Japanese society cannot be overlooked. Furthermore, if teachers’ working hour will be reduced, there will be need to compensate teachers or staff for extra-curricular activity and administrative work, which will cost enormously. For these reasons, the road to develop teachers’ quality will have many setbacks

Conclusion Citizenship Education appears as a hope of new instrument in unprecedented post-industrialized developed European countries. Japan has imported these new means of education wishing to tackle a lot of unsolved agenda in the 21st century. It has caught the attentions of educational scholars who have discussed and tried to find possibilities of Citizenship Education in Japan. In fact, some schools have uniquely introduced it as a subject, which got spotted by educators and academics. However, it also brought confusion, especially to relevant policymakers and practitioners because of the existence of multiple citizenship-related policies and subjects. Furthermore, there have been quite a few discussions on pedagogical (qualitative) aspect of Citizenship Education but less on the policy (quantitative) side of it.

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This paper attempted to conduct an analysis on the situation of Japanese Citizenship Education in line with Educational Sector Diagnose. Due to the data availability and lack of solid definition of Citizenship Education, the paper appears to be sometimes sidetrack the discussions. However, that is where the Japanese Citizenship Education is today and will be the starting point of the development. Regarding the reflection upon ESA techniques, it does help to capture the problem of educational system holistically. Having the ESA framework under my hand keeps me paying attention to grasp the subjects more contextually, systematically, quantitatively, interdependently, objectively but less subjectively, which empiricist educators sometimes fails. On the other hand, the framework limits the perspectives of approach on the educational system, and it highly depends on data availability, which also eventually helps to spot what kind of educational data is missing in the respective countries. I personally think that there needs to be more stress on contextual analysis and external effectiveness in ESA for the reasons that sometimes the results of the education fails to produce results of the society it self as is pointed out in this paper. It is more about the questions how much education can actually make a difference in real society rather than producing just “good students”.

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