Home > Policy > White Paper, Notice, Announcement > White Paper > JAPANESE GOVERMENT POLICICIES IN EDUCATION, SCIENCE AND CULTURE 1994 > PART I Chapter 1 Section 3 4

The alleviation of excessive competition in entrance examinations requires various improvements in the present situation. It is necessary to promote the reform of upper secondary education and develop more individualized and diversified upper secondary schools. Emphasis on the single criterion of standard score must also be reduced.

One criticism of the existing system is its failure to provide adequate career guidance based on the abilities, aptitudes, interests, concerns, and career paths of individual students. Until now, most lower secondary schools have evaluated students' scholastic achievements on the basis of their scores, rankings, and standard score in commercially produced tests, making use of these criteria to advise students which upper secondary schools to apply to.

This situation is the result of parents' desire to ensure that their children enter an upper secondary school, teachers' desire to see that these wishes are fulfilled, and the convenience of using students' standard score as a guideline in career guidance because of an entrant selection system that tends to focus on that criterion alone.

While this state of affairs can be attributed to parents' desire to see their children safely enrolled in upper secondary schools, and even to teachers' attitudes, the ensuing reliance on standard score in commercially produced tests has had the effect of obscuring the real purpose of career guidance, which is to enable students to think independently about their approach to life and make independent decisions and choices about their future according to their own perceptions of their goals and to foster the abilities and attitudes that will enable students to realize their potential throughout their lives. Efforts are now being made to reduce reliance on standard score in commercially produced tests and return to an approach that is more in keeping with the original purpose of career guidance. The steps being taken to improve career guidance are outlined in chapter 4.