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PART Recent Trends and Developments in Government Policies in Education, Science and Culture

To cope with the diversification of the abilities and aptitudes of students enrolled in upper secondary schools, the Ministry has taken various measures for making upper secondary education more diverse and more flexible with regard both to the content of educational programs and to the statutory framework for the structure of upper secondary education. The measures include: making the provisions of the Course of Study more flexible: creating "credit-system" upper secondary schools; giving more flexibility to the length of part-time and correspondence courses; and creating a system under which upper secondary school students may study abroad, retaining the students of their upper secondary schools, and, after coming back from abroad, their schools may award them a certain number of credits for their study in a foreign secondary school. In many localities and in many schools, efforts are being made to utilize these measures and thus provide students with attractive opportunities for learning adapted to the diverse needs of individuals.

As regards procedures for selecting upper secondary school entrants, each prefecture government has been improving these procedures in such a way as is suitable for the real circumstances in the prefecture. It is hoped that further innovative efforts will be made to develop more appropriate selection procedures.

Apart from selection procedures in general, the Ministry began in 1990 to conduct studies on measures for enabling those students whose parent is moving to a new workplace in another locality to enter or transfer more easily to an upper secondary school located in the locality.

With regard to vocational education, the Ministry has been striving to make educational programs in this area more attractive and more relevant to a changing society, by creating new vocational courses or reorganizing some of the existing courses, by improving and enriching the curriculum, by improving physical facilities and equipment, and by other means. In the revised Course of Study, the enrichment of instruction related to computers, the creation of "problem-solving studies" and other improvements were incorporated.