（5）The Inauguration of Upper Secondary Schools and the Three Principles

The upper secondary school system opened on April 1, 1948, following a full year of preparation after the enforcement of the School Education Law. The three basic principles which had guided the decisions on establishing the local public upper secondary schools were 1) the creation of attendance districts; 2) the enforcement of coeducation; and 3) consolidation into comprehensive schools. In other words, the new system was intended to eliminate the differentials of the old system, to insure the standardization of upper secondary education, and insofar as possible to place the control of upper secondary schools in the hands of prefectural authorities. To accomplish the latter, the Board of Education Law, which was promulgated on July 15, 1948, as stated later, provided for prefectural boards of education and regulated the creation of attendance districts for local public upper secondary schools. Between 1948 and 1950 under the careful but sometimes not suitable supervision of the Occupation authorities, these attendance districts were created and the consolidation of existing local public upper secondary schools steadily continued. However, bit by bit, particularly after the end of the Occupation in 1952, prefectural authorities began to revise the upper secondary school system so as to more accurately reflect the actual conditions of their districts. On the other hand, as the three principles were not applied to private institutions, many private schools, which had existed as middle level schools (chuto gakko) under the old system; never became coeducational, and some continued to offer unified lower and upper secondary school programs.

The attempt to standardize upper secondary school education meant that the essentials of both general and vocational education had to be offered in the curricula. To accommodate the wide variety of courses necessary for such a comprehensive upper secondary school education, a system of elective subjects was established. Inevitably, however, given the strong emphasis placed on general education as a means for building character in a democratic society, the number of students electing to take vocational courses dropped. Simultaneously, the number of independent vocational schools decreased and the quality of vocational education offered in the upper secondary schools suffered. The situation was improved in 1951 with the enactment of the Vocational Education Promotion Law. This Law, which was promulgated on June 11, 1951, and put in force on that day, authorized government subsidies to build up an adequate vocational education program.

The School Education Law also instituted programs for both part-time and correspondence systems of upper secondary education, and these greatly increased the number of working youths who were able to continue their education past the compulsory stage. In 1952, 532,465 students, or 22.7% of all students of upper secondary schools, were enrolled on a part-time basis, or 3.1 times more than had been enrolled as part-time students in 1948.

In general, the policy of attempting to make upper secondary education equally available to all students was successful in expanding the size of the upper secondary school system. Between 1948 and 1952, the number of schools increased from 3,575 to 4,506, and the number of students enrolled nearly doubled from 1,203,963 to 2,342,869.