Home > Policy > White Paper, Notice, Announcement > White Paper > Japanese Government Policies in Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology 2001 >Chapter3 Section3.1

In the past some have complained that Japanese education tended to be too standardized because of its emphasis on equal opportunity in education. Across the board, education, as stated in the Education Reform Plan for the 21^st Century, should be rectified to realize an education system to improve qualification and talent of an individual child.

  From this viewpoint, as described in Section 2, small-group education has been promoted in elementary and secondary education in order to have children acquire basic scholastic proficiency in each educational stage, and proficiency-dependent teaching and advanced teaching have been implemented in order to further enhance children's ability. In addition, a unified lower and upper secondary school education system has been encouraged because a longer period of consistent education is expected to contribute to bringing up children's individuality and creativity through experiential learning and other activities. Furthermore, in order to develop diverse gifts of students, their transition from an upper secondary school to a university has been made smoother and more effective. Such measures include allowing early university entrance for upper secondary students who have displayed academic excellence suited to the educational objective of that university and by facilitating coordination between upper secondary schools and universities through, for example, university classes opened to upper secondary students. University entrance examinations, which used to be inclined to emphasize academic ability evaluation too much, have also been improved with the introduction of more diverse selection methods and criteria, the clarification of admission policy in each school, and the enhancement of multidimensional evaluation on examinee's ability and qualification through admission office (AO) entrance examinations.

  As for university education, there is a call to enhance its educational and research functions, especially with the view to raising leaders for the next generation who can take the lead internationally and thus contribute to society in the various fields of their strengths. Given such social demands, postgraduate professional schools, in addition to research institutes for academic research, have been established. In these schools, students learn practical expertise necessary in society. Education in the form of internships is also promoted to raise students' awareness on career or work ethics. In addition, efforts to stimulate students' motivation for learning have been made through small-group education, teaching assistant systems and more rigorous assessment of academic achievement.