A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

Chapter 2 - The Development and Implementation
of Education Standards in Japan
(Part 3 of 5)

Junior High School

Junior High School Curriculum

The junior high school curriculum is presented in Table 5. There are eight subjects, including math and science, that are required in all three grades (7-9). Electives comprise about 10 percent of the total school hours. As is the case with the elementary school curriculum, the junior high school curriculum strives to balance academic and non-academic subjects. Music, fine arts, health and physical education are required subjects for all three grades. The most common elective subject is foreign language, usually English, but music and fine arts are also offered as electives chosen with the advice of the teacher.

Mathematics. The level of mathematics becomes increasingly difficult and the pace of the math curriculum accelerates during the junior high school years. Several Japanese students complained during our interviews about the difficulty and pace of junior high school math. Even students who reported little difficulty with arithmetic in elementary school said that they were no longer able to keep up with math in junior high school. “Sometime around the eighth grade,” explained one student, “I could no longer understand what was going on in math.”

SOURCE: Adapted from Jichi Sogo Center, 1991.

Several Japanese parents also complained about the level of difficulty of junior high school math. Echoing a common theme, a mother of five explained what she perceived was the cause of her daughter's decline in math scores during junior high, a situation she described as the source of her present concerns:

In elementary school, students learn arithmetic and great differences between students do not appear. However, in junior high school, math is taught more systematically and rigorously. That is when differences between students start to appear.

An education official in Naka City described the problem with math instruction in junior high schools, as one of a lack of sufficient instruction time to cover the curriculum adequately:

Elementary school students are taking 5 hours of math per week. Seventh- and eighth-graders in junior high school are taking fewer hours so that the classes tend to be too heavy in content. There is too much material to cover. This leads students to dislike math and consider it useless. In my opinion, math hours should be increased in junior high school by 2 or 3 hours per week.

An education official in Naka reiterated the complaint of the math teachers:

In elementary school, there is time for students to be involved and do hands-on activities, but in the junior high school, we just lecture. That really alienates students and makes them think that math is useless.

Science. Students also indicated having problems keeping up with the science curriculum in junior high school. An otherwise highly motivated high school student said that a bad experience with physics in junior high school caused him to dislike science. "I do not want to talk about it," responded the student when probed for more information.

One teacher spoke of the difficulty of the science curriculum:

The junior high school science curriculum is quite difficult. Even high school teachers will look at it and say, ‘Wow, these kids are doing difficult things in junior high.’ I feel that content is such that students are probably memorizing it without understanding it. (10th-grade chemistry teacher, Naka Vocational High School)

Several junior high school science teachers also complained that they had trouble covering the entire science curriculum in the allotted instruction time. Echoing a common criticism of science education in Japan, these teachers said that they felt pressured to teach science as a mass of facts to be crammed in rather than a way of learning about the world. One young junior high school teacher who emphasized experiments in the early part of the semester found himself in a tough position. He had to reduce the amount of material that he covered in the textbook. "I want to communicate the joy of doing science," the teacher explained, but by mid-semester, he said he was "panicking" about how to cover everything that had to be covered in the curriculum so that his students would be prepared for the material on the high school entrance examination.

One junior high school science teacher said that the reason many students lost interest in science at the junior high school level is because there was not enough instructional time to cover everything in the curriculum. "Students," he explained, "end up thinking of science as a subject with a lot to memorize and they get turned off." The teacher added that in junior high school the level of the textbooks is too high and there is not enough instruction time to cover the entire curriculum. He further felt that more instructional time is needed for conducting experiments.

Instruction in Junior High School

Despite the reactions of parents and teachers to the difficulty of the curriculum, the pace of instruction in junior high math classrooms we observed was not what one would expect from such criticisms. The classes seemed to proceed at a slow pace. In fact, I observed a couple of students drawing cartoon characters after they finished the assignment early. The pace was unhurried, the students talked and joked with one another, and the class atmosphere was pleasant and cheerful.

This was also true of the junior high school science classes. Students were given explanations by the teacher and were provided plenty of time to conduct experiments. There are students who always finish experiments and schoolwork early. For example, one group of three boys worked methodically and efficiently, finishing the experiment within10 minutes. These students spent the remainder of the 20 minutes of class doing work for other classes. The teacher ignored these efficient students and waited for the slowest students to finish the experiment before his summary and explanation of the experimental results.

Instructional Materials. Japanese junior high school textbooks are small soft cover books. Most are no larger and heavier than a short paperback novel. Since the textbooks are the property of the students, students are free to highlight important sections and to make notes in the margins. Junior high school students we interviewed reported using these textbooks for review, particularly as a way to study for high school entrance examinations.

Students are expected to take the textbooks home. Japanese schools require students to take textbooks home every day as lockers for overnight storage are not provided for student use. Instead, schools typically provide small cubicles for daily storage of items such as bookpacks.

An examination of Japanese textbooks shows them to be simple and clear in presentation. Successive units are integrated and lessons commonly refer to earlier material. The new concept of the unit is then introduced in common language. After this brief introduction, there is a word problem, followed by several examples. There is also a small set of four or five problems for students to solve. Units such as this, which we saw in use, could include as many as 26 pages with large print and ample margins. The textbooks themselves are about 100 pages in length and typically there are two volumes per grade.

Textbooks, particularly in math and science, were seen by the teachers we interviewed as only one instructional resource among several. Since the number of problems in Japanese textbooks is small, students also use supplementary practice problem booklets (mondai enshu). These practice booklets parallel the text books and contain additional problems for each lesson. The booklets are made available to students by the school for a small fee. Students use both textbooks and practice problem booklets during class.

The need for more practice problems is greatest during the 9th and 12th grades, the years before the high school and college entrance examinations. This need for practice problems in preparation for examinations is partially filled by these booklets. Many math and science teachers we observed used these practice booklets during instruction.

Some teachers also reported using the practice booklets as a way to enhance instruction for high-achieving students by assigning these students difficult problems to do on their own. Even elementary school teachers reported using this strategy for dealing with individual differences. Hence, the booklets of practice problems allow teachers to meet the needs of individual students. One math teacher explained that the booklets provide a range of problems, from easy to extremely difficult. This teacher made individual assignments from the booklet, depending on the motivation and ability of the students. Many Japanese teachers reported assigning additional problems to students of above average ability, thus, the problem booklets (mondai enshu) provide the primary means by which Japanese teachers accommodate these students and maintain their motivation to study.

Teachers also regularly use worksheets for in-class instruction. The sheets are commonly designed by the teacher, but may also come from other sources, such as other teachers and teachers’ guides. In fact, in most of the classroom observations, printouts were the primary resource for instruction during class. In spite of the apparent high quality of the textbooks and practice problem booklets, few Japanese teachers said they used these as the primary instructional material during class. Instead, most Japanese math and science teachers relied on worksheets that they made for each period. In Japanese, these worksheets are called 'printouts'. The printouts contain the lesson objectives and problems related to each day’s lesson. They are used by elementary, junior, and senior high school teachers.

The printouts are typically clear and well-organized. They are made so that students can follow the lecture and do problems in class. Since problems are written out, teachers do not need to waste class time writing out problems on the chalkboard. Textbooks appeared to be a secondary resource or reference for students; during many classroom observations textbooks remained closed on top of students' desks.

The printouts are also used by students for study and review, and in keeping with the practice of not grading everyday work, these printouts are seldom graded by teachers.

Figure 3 presents a translation of a printout for use in an eighth-grade math lesson. The printout, which students used during the 45 minutes of instruction, closely matched the teacher's instructional plan.

Figure 3 — Translation of Printout

1. Review of direct proportions Example: Area changing with time  

2. Looking at the following graphs, which of the following are direct proportions? Think also of the reason for your answer.

    

   1. x:	1	2	3	4	5	Direct proportion, other
      y:	2	4	6	8	10	Reason

    

   2. x:	1	2	3	4	5	Direct proportion, other
      y:	1	3	5	7	9	Reason

    

   3. x:	1	2	3	4	5	Direct proportion, other
      y:	1	2	3	4	5	Reason

       

   4. x:	1	2	3	4	5	Direct proportion, other
      y:	1	4	9	16	25	Reason

       

   5. x:	1	2	3	4	5	Direct proportion, other
      y:	9	8	7	6	5	Reason

 

3. Determine whether the following x/y relationships are direct proportions.
   1. Y equals double x.
   2. A train that travels 3km per minute goes y kilometers in x minutes.
   3. With 500 yen, you buy x pencils at 70 yen each and the change is y yen.
   4. A ribbon of x centimeters is cut up and divided equally for six people in segments of length y.
   5. If x is divided by y the quotient is 3.
   6. Going to the same place that takes x minutes walking takes 5 minutes less, or y minutes, by bike.

    

   (1)	(2)	(3)
   (4)	(5)	(6)
   (7)	(8)	(9)

 

4. For y = 4x, think about when x is a negative number.

X:	-5	-4	-3	-3	-2	-1	0	1	2	3	4	5
Y:									4	8	12	16	20

How about when y = -2x?

X:	-5	-4	-3	-3	-2	-1	0	1	2	3	4	5
Y:

 

Wrap up

SOURCE : Third International Mathematics and Science Study, Case Study Project, 1994-95.

Instruction and the slower learner. The issue of dealing with students of different levels of ability was salient to teachers and administrators at the junior high school level:

There is almost no connection between the junior high schools and elementary schools in Japan. Once kids enter junior high school, it is truly a type of education that I would call cramming. I think it would be nice if they would spend more time in junior high school explaining things. (Principal of Matsu Elementary)

As is true of elementary schools, tracking and ability grouping are not permitted at the junior high school level, even though many Japanese students begin complaining of difficulty in keeping up in math and science at the junior high school level.

Team teaching is being tried experimentally in math classrooms throughout Japan as a way to help slow learners. Team teaching was first implemented in selected junior high schools in 1994, but the number of team-teaching lessons was minimal. According to one teacher, the team-teaching experiment was introduced as a way to prevent low-achieving students from dropping out or from refusing to attend school (tokokyohi). "The purpose of team teaching," explained an elementary school principal, "is to help slow learners during the class period."

Team teaching was observed in an eighth-grade math class at Midori Junior High School. There were about 40 students in the class, a typical number of students for a Japanese classroom. The teacher called students one by one to the front of the classroom to describe in writing the relationship of two sets of numbers. While students were writing on the board, the remaining students worked on related problems. The team teacher was very busy throughout the period circling the class and providing one-on-one instruction to students having trouble.

Many students who finished early quietly twirled colorful pencils decorated with cute characters such as the penguin-like Pingu. Others, mostly the boys, looked down at pencil cases or notebooks with animated "Dragon Ball Z" cartoon characters. As was the case with the junior high school science class, the focus of this math class was on the average learners; fast learners were left alone, waiting for the rest of the class to catch up.

Perception and Use of Instructional Resources Outside of School for Mastery of the Curriculum

One well publicized consequence of the difficulty of the junior high school curriculum and the desire of students to do well is that many students begin to seek help outside the school. Most of the students we interviewed in the eighth grade reported attending juku. These students are not exceptional, as national statistics indicate.

In a survey conducted in 1993, 64.2 percent of junior high school students surveyed in Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka, where juku are most popular, reported attending juku (Nohara, 1993). The figures were lower for non-metropolitan areas (20 percent for cities with populations between 8,000 and 30,000), but the data showed a marked increase in juku attendance in small cities during the past decade. In villages with populations under 8,000, the proportion attending juku doubled from 6 percent to 12 percent in the past decade (Nohara, 1993).

Most of the junior high school students interviewed reported that the primary reason for their attending juku was to receive help in basic subjects. One student said that he needed the instruction in order to "keep up with his studies in school." Many of the Japanese students we interviewed reported bringing schoolwork to the juku for help on a regular basis.

Students did not report pressure from parents to attend juku. One eighth-grader said that she started attending juku because her older brother had attended and said it was fun. Many reported that juku was a good place to make friends. Hence, juku have a social function, as well as an academic one. Only one student had anything negative to say about the juku experience. He described the juku teachers as scary: "They yell at you if you don't do your homework." But even this student thought that attending juku was a positive experience overall.

Many parents did express negative or mixed feelings about juku. A mother of three high-achieving students gave the following reason for her opposition to juku:

I was opposed to juku, so I didn't send my daughter. There is the money, but in addition, I feel that juku only teaches children how to solve problems on the examination. Unlike schools, juku do not raise human beings. Since they do not raise human beings, I think that it is better to just go to school without going to juku even if one's grades are bad. Also, my older children did not go to juku, and the feeling of having accomplished what they did on their own is a source of pride for them today.

Most Japanese teachers reported taking a neutral position toward juku, neither encouraging or discouraging students from attendance. However, the general attitude toward juku displayed by teachers is negative. In fact, most Japanese teachers said that they encourage students to use the resources of the school and self-study to improve academic performance.

One teacher confessed that his sense of pride was challenged by the juku. "I'd rather have them study within the framework of the school," said the teacher, "It's just my sense of pride as a teacher."

Testing in Junior High Schools

Japanese students quickly become accustomed to taking major types of tests in junior high. These major tests, given in both the junior and senior high schools, are called periodic major exams (teikishiken). These exams are conducted in the same manner in most Japanese senior high schools. They are similar in form and content to the entrance examinations students must take to enter high school and college.

Periodic exams usually include midterm and final examinations for each of the three semesters during the school year. Most Japanese secondary students reported taking at least six major examinations every school year. These examinations are given over a period of 2 or 3 days during regular school hours.

One junior high school student said that the periodic exams gives him a "kick in the pants" to study. He confessed, along with two other students at his school, that he probably would not study much if there were not any periodic examinations to motivate him. He added that he gets serious about studying around one week before the examinations. These same students, who were very active in school and high achievers, confessed to slacking off between exams. "Like when the exam is over, I just breath a sigh of relief and don't do anything for awhile."

The following conversation with three junior high school students captures the atmosphere from the students' point of view before the major exams.
 

Interviewer: Do you feel like studying before the exams?

Student 1: Yes, because everyone else is studying.

Student 2: That's right.

Student 3: You feel that you have to do it.

Interviewer: When do you get this feeling?

Student 1: About four days before the exams.

Student 3: Since everyone else is studying, I feel that I don't want to lose to other students.

Student 2: We tell each other, when it's all over we can play and have fun.

Major examinations are frequent in junior high school, about once a month. One student described how often he studies for these examinations and at juku:

There is a periodic exam about once a month. About 1 week before the periodic exams, I begin studying. I devote about 2 or 3 hours a day after school to studying for the periodic exams. I also go to juku once a week for 3 hours. (Eighth grade student)

The schools we visited coordinate activities around these periodic exams. Teachers explained that club activities are canceled for one week before the five periodic examinations so that students can concentrate on studying. Even junior soccer leagues, which are not affiliated with the schools, cooperate with the schools and cancel practices and games for one week prior to the periodic exam. The schools and the community appear to be sending a strong message to students that studying for the periodic exams is a priority over all other activities.

Since the periodic exams are constructed to help students prepare for the entrance examinations and to measure their mastery of the curriculum, the tests are challenging. Formula sheets are not permitted for the math sections, which leaves students with a lot of material to memorize. All three Marunochi Junior High students talked about the difficulty of the math part of the periodic exams. "There are just tons of problems we have to go through," said one student. "There is no time to look over answers." The students estimate that there are usually 50 math problems on each exam. In contrast to the math section of the exam, the students agreed that the science section is not as difficult. "A lot to memorize," one student explained, "but fairly easy."

Quizzes and short tests were not emphasized by the Japanese teachers with whom we talked. Generally, teachers reported using in-class tests sparingly since students are motivated by the periodic exams. Teachers reported using the in-class tests to monitor the progress of students or the effectiveness of instruction, rather than in determining semester grades.

Several teachers expressed the opinion that excessive use of in-class tests would confuse students about the true purpose of learning. One teacher posited that if he began grading these tests, students would start worrying about scores instead of attempting to master the curriculum. Teachers who give such tests do so to help students check how well they know the material which they are required to know to move to the next level. In these cases, students typically grade their own "small tests," and these are not factored into grades for the course.

According to our interviews with teachers, grades and the students’ rank in the class are determined by a combination of the major exams and the small tests. A large degree of autonomy is given to departments to determine the relative weightings of the two components. Generally, exam scores contribute about 60 to 70 percent of the comprehensive grades in math and science, with the remaining 30 to 40 percent being based on classroom behavior and homework assignments.

Since the high school entrance examinations are based entirely on knowledge of the curriculum, junior high schools are under pressure to deliver the curriculum. According to an eighth-grade physics teacher, "There is no direct pressure from Monbusho to achieve a certain level. However, most teachers feel pressured to teach the curriculum because almost everyone goes to high school, and the high school entrance examination demands a certain level of knowledge."

Entrance Examinations For High School

Graduation from junior high school marks the end of compulsory education in Japan. Nevertheless, 96 percent of junior high school graduates go on to senior high school (Monbusho, 1993). In order to advance to senior high school, graduates of junior high schools must take standardized high school entrance examinations. The examinations may be either prefectural or national, depending on the school system to which the student is applying. Most students take prefectural high school entrance examinations. A small percentage of students take exams that would admit them to schools designated as “national” schools.

In contrast to countries where admission to a high school depends on the area of a city in which a student's family resides, students in Japan have potential access to a larger number of schools as long as entrance requirements are met. Since the Japanese population is highly urbanized and most cities have well developed mass transportation systems, competition for entrance into the higher-ranked high schools in Japan is typically intense, as was the case in the three regions we visited.

Regional differences. Because the high school entrance examinations are devised by officials from the local boards of education, there are minor differences in the content of the examinations, and so actual problems may differ from prefecture to prefecture. However, the important point is that all of the problems for all prefectural examinations must be within the domain of the Monbusho curricular guidelines. A prefectural review board determines whether questions deviate from the content of the curriculum or are too difficult. Since the questions on the high school entrance examination are restricted to the Monbusho curriculum, companies that publish materials to help students prepare for the examinations advise them that the best way to prepare for the examinations is to review textbooks and do practice problems.

Five basic subjects of the entrance examination. High school entrance examinations must cover five academic subjects that are the core subjects of the Monbusho curriculum: Japanese, mathematics, social studies, science, and English. The mathematics section tends to be comprised of mostly open-ended questions, while other subjects, such as science, tend to have multiple-choice answers. Each subject is tested for 40 minutes and all subjects are weighted equally. Total scores are used by high schools in making admission decisions.

Entrance examinations for private schools, however, have included problems that cover areas outside the Monbusho curriculum. The Ministry has actively discouraged this practice, suggesting that it contributes to "educational overheating" and to inequality between students who can and cannot afford juku. In recent years, there is evidence that fewer private schools are using problems outside the Monbusho curriculum because of the pressure from Monbusho (Nohara, 1993).

Exam preparation. Japanese bookstores are filled with inexpensive preparation guides that contain information for test-takers. The guides invariably contain former examinations from the previous 5 or 6 years, complete with answers and explanations. Mock examinations with self-scoring instructions are also included in many preparation guides. The preparation guides analyze the topics covered in past exams, the trends, the types of problems and strategies for test-taking. One booklet even advises students about what to eat the night before and the morning of the test. On the day of the test, a light breakfast of rice, miso soup, pickles, and green tea is recommended.

A preparation guide for the prefecture where our primary research site was located indicated that five areas of the Monbusho curriculum in mathematics have been tested in the past 5 years. These areas include (a) numbers and formulas, (b) equations and inequalities, (c) functions, (d) figures, and (e) statistics. Past problems were also classified into subcategories. This delineation revealed that some topics are covered every year while others have never been covered. For example, within the topical area of functions, proportions had not been covered in the past five examinations. Roughly one-third of the topics were not covered by recent examinations.

Fewer topics had been covered every year in the science section than in the math section. Gas, force and pressure, voltage and current, earth and space, and the earth's crust and minerals were topics that had been tested by all five of the most recent examinations. Interviews with students provided evidence that students were aware of these details of coverage on entrance examinations.

The math section of the high school entrance examination for this prefecture consisted of three long and 20 short problems. Short problems are those where the answers to various problems are independent of one another. The long problems require several steps and integration across topical areas. For example, in recent examinations such problems have required synthesis of the topics of figures, functions, and graphs. The preparation guidebook cautions students that the long problems take time to solve and make "Forty minutes seem like a very short time." Thus, the guidebook warns, "Time management is very important in the math section."

The science portion of the examination has typically consisted of four long problems and a series of short ones. According to the guidebook, the science questions emphasize basic knowledge, but the range of topics that appear in problems has been wide. Therefore, the guidebooks advise students that everything in the curriculum must be studied.

Motivation to perform on the examination. Since high schools are ranked according to their academic status, and since the rankings have clear implications for university entrance chances, a certain proportion of Japanese students are motivated to perform well on the high school entrance examinations. A high school math teacher gave a common explanation for the high level of achievement of Japanese students:

The academic credential society (gakurekishakai) has created the high academic standards in Japan. This is because parents believe that the better school you go to, the better company you can enter, and the more stable a position you can attain. Parents push their children from a young age to do well in school.

Clearly, examinations and tests provide an important source of motivation to study. One teacher had this to say about students' motivation to study in Japan.

Interviewer: Do students become interested in the material by just hearing that it will be on the high school entrance examination?

High School Math Teacher: Yes, there are many of those kinds of students. The color of their eyes will change just hearing that something will be on the high school entrance examination.

The weighting of the entrance examinations in decisions about admissions also contributes to increasing students' motivation to master the curriculum at school, since admission to high school is based on both the comprehensive score on the high school entrance examination and the junior high school report card.

Differences Between Junior High Schools

Differences between junior high schools were more pronounced and more openly discussed by educators and parents, particularly in Naka City. Many parents in Naka City reported being aware of an unofficial ranking of junior high schools in the area. For example, one mother reported that her daughter was told by a high school teacher that she would do all right at a certain competitive high school, because the junior high school from which she graduated was also a competitive one. Two junior high schools in Naka City, Chuo and Shimogawa, illustrate the kinds of differences between schools of which Japanese parents and educators were talking.

Chuo Junior High School. Many parents and educators said that Chuo was one of the "best" junior high schools in Naka City. The school is located near some of the most expensive real estate in the city, a region that includes many affluent families. It was not unusual to see an expensive luxury car parked outside the school gates on days when there were parent-teacher conferences. The superior quality of the physical plant was also immediately evident.

The students at Chuo were animated, cheerful, and talkative. One student told me that he read somewhere that the fish in the Japanese diet provided a chemical for the brain that was hypothesized to be an explanation for the higher achievement of Japanese in math. Another eighth-grader said that she read about how Japanese processed language in the left brain and that had implications for math achievement. The validity of these explanations notwithstanding, the remarkable thing about these students was their breadth of knowledge from outside reading: knowledge that went beyond the official school curriculum.

The students at Chuo had clear plans for their futures. They typically expected to enter highly-ranked high schools and eventually to obtain well-paying jobs. One student, for example, expected to take over his father's company after majoring in business in college. His goal was to make his father's successful local company into a successful national one.

The principal of Chuo explained some of the benefits of school like Chuo. “There are no great differences in student ability,” he said, “Almost all of the students are able to handle the material, and they are motivated." The principal also explained that parents of junior high school students, in contrast to parents of elementary school students, chose their address on the basis of the quality of the junior high school. In fact, some parents submit bogus address changes to city hall in order that their children be within the district housing of Chuo. This practice was hard to control, the principal confessed, since schools did not have the resources to investigate every address registry at city hall.

Shimogawa Junior High School. Separated only fifteen minutes by train, Shimogawa Junior High was a world away from Chuo in terms of the social class background of students. Shimogawa is located in a bustling retail area not far from the city's central train station. The school itself is located in part of what is called a dowa area, or area where there is a high concentration of the burakumin minority. About 10 percent of the students at Shimogawa are of burakumin descent.

Teachers at Shimogawa reported that they had trouble keeping students motivated and interested in school. "Only about 50 percent of Shimogawa students," according to one teacher, "are able to keep up with the curriculum." This is in contrast to the nearly 100 percent estimate given by the principal of Chuo. While Chuo students talked about applying to the highest-ranked public and private high schools in Naka City, Shimogawa's guidance room was filled with pamphlets for vocational high schools and career training centers.

The students at Shimogawa, even though those interviewed were all members of the student council, seemed less confident, less animated, and less well read than the students at Chuo. They were all highly motivated academically, but they were not as articulate or cheerful as the Chuo students. They also reported having difficulty with their courses.

Perceptions of fairness at Chuo and Shimogawa. The higher academic level of Chuo compared to schools like Shimogawa was seen by teachers, parents and students as both negative and positive. On the one hand, Chuo teachers could cover the curriculum more effectively with their students, and therefore prepare them better for the high school entrance examination. On the other hand, since high school entrance is determined by both examination scores and high school grades, Chuo students perceived themselves at a disadvantage because they felt it was much harder to get good grades at Chuo since they were competing with other high-achieving students. Shimogawa educators agreed that Chuo students were at a disadvantage because of the admission policy of high schools.

[Chapter 2 - The Development and Implementation of Education Standards in Japan (Part 2 of 5)]

[Chapter 2 - The Development and Implementation of Education Standards in Japan (Part 4 of 5)]