China News Service, July 20. According to Kyodo News, Japan’s primary and junior high school students have dropped significantly due to the low birthrate. There are about 9.56 million people nationwide in 2020, a decrease of nearly 1 million compared with 2010.
According to reports, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology publishes statistics on the number of educational institutions, the number of students with student status, and the trend of further education as a “Basic School Survey” every year. Based on these statistics, Kyodo News calculated the number of students and the rate of increase or decrease in the number of public and private elementary and junior high schools by municipality.
Kyodo News investigated the number of local governments whose students have decreased by more than 30% in the past 10 years, and found that there were 346 of the 1,892 municipalities in the country. Especially in the county, there is still an underpopulation problem, and school mergers and closures are accelerating. In 2020, there were a total of 29,793 elementary and junior high schools, a decrease of about 3,000 in 10 years.
According to the report, small schools with very few students cannot hold extracurricular activities that require many students to participate, making it difficult to ensure learning opportunities.
The largest decrease in the number of students was in Okuma Town, Fukushima Prefecture (99% decrease), mainly due to the special factor of the Fukushima nuclear accident. In addition, Kamikitayama Village, Nara Prefecture, decreased by 81%, from 36 in 2010 to 7. Minamimaki Village in Gunma Prefecture decreased by 65%, and Otaki Village in Nagano Prefecture decreased by 64%.
The report pointed out that Japanese local governments need to provide rich learning opportunities through hard work and transformation of thinking. In order to improve the quality of education and achieve rationalization, the forms of schools should also be more diversified, including “compulsory education schools” with a consistent system of primary and junior high schools, and schools jointly established by multiple local governments.