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Educational development makes a great contribution to social progress and, social progress, in its turn, promotes educational development. In recognition of this interrelationship, the countries of the world, both the developed and the developing, are now attaching increasing importance to education, making greater efforts and taking more positive measures for its development.

It is widely believed that education in Japan is of a relatively high level both in its quantitative and qualitative aspects, and has been so appraised, especially in foreign countries. However, it is a continuous necessity to have exact knowledge of the actual level of educational standards in Japan in order to forecast educational requirements and to program educational developments to meet the changing social needs.

With this in view, this report is intended to provide an evaluation of the educational standards in Japan, together with measures of the quantitative expansion of education, the curriculum, the structure of teacher strength, facilities, equipment, health, physical education, educational expenditure, etc. by comparing them with and also by making study on the actual condition and the new trends in the major countries, mainly, in the United States of America, the United Kingdom, West Germany, France and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. A similar study was made in 1959, which resulted in the publication of a report "Educational Standards in Japan, 1959." Now it is five years since that report was published and in view of the remarkable development having been made in foreign countries as well as Japan during this period, it is considered quite worth-while to make public in this report, "Educational Standards in Japan, 1964", the results of a comparable study of more recent date. This report presents the most recently available data on educational development in Japan and similar comparative data for the major countries of the world.

As for the quantitative expansion, the educational standards in Japan are relatively high, or as high as those in other major countries. At the same time, in Japan, as in other major countries, the expansion of education has been most notable at the upper secondary and higher education levels under the impact of the expanding social and industrial demands for man-power and the increasing individual demands resulting from the rising level of the nation's living and culture.

Nevertheless it has been made clear in this report that closer examination has to be made as to the improvement of the curricula and teaching methods in Japan. It has been pointed out also that examination and improvement will be needed in relation to the system for evaluating the scholastic ability and aptitudes of students, as well as in the system of the matriculation in order to identify those students having the scholastic aptitude to profit by higher education. These are problem areas common to the major countries.

Qualitative aspects of the teaching staff systematic teacher training, the physical plant including facilities, equipment and teaching materials, the provision of scholarships and other forms of assistance to school attendance, and health and physical education have been improved continuously year after year, indeed, but further improvement is sill required in some respects to bring the level of Japanese education to that of other major countries.

The quantitative and qualitive development of education is reflected in the expenditure made for education in relation to total national in'come. In this respect, Japan has ranked high among the major countries of the world, but in recent years the rising trend in the percentage of inccme devoted to education has slackened in Japan compared with that in each of other major countries. At the same time, the educational expenditure per pupil in Japan is smaller than that in each of the other major countries, and that difference in the educationai expenditure per pupil between Japan and many of the other countries is greater than the difference in the national income per capita. This indicates that greater effort is necesary for increasing edncational expenditure in this county.

Educational policy is dictated by the needs of the society as a whole as well as by the nation's individual demands. It is noteworthy however, that the major countries have recently initiated decisive measures for educational renovation and develaped long-term educational plans to meet the evolving social and national requirements of economic and structural changes effected mainly by scientific and technical developments. Although the stages of development and the educational system vary from country to country, it is found that the major countries have been taking a common direction in their educational renovation and planning. For instance, the United States of America, having attained in large measure full quantitative expansion of education, has been putting greater emphasis upon the raising of the quality of education, the finding and development of the scholastic ability and aptitudes of the students and pupils and the improvement of school organization and curriculum, and the European countries, preserving long established school systems, plan to increase educational opportunity for students and pupils according to their scholastic ability and aptitudes, or aim at the quantitative expansion of education while raising the quality of education by adjustment to the scholastic ability and aptitudes off those who receive education. Japan, having achieved comparatively broad quantitative expansion of education, must make efforts to preserve and broaden this expansion and at the same time to assure continuous improvement of the quality of education and to increase educational expenditure with due consideration to the enrichment if the scholastic ability and aptitudes of students and pupils.

This report covers only the field of school 'education, to the exclusion of such non-school areas as social education, etc., as data for such areas are not available for other countries.