Home > Policy > White Paper, Notice, Announcement > White Paper > Japanese Government Policies in Education, Science, Sports and Culture 2000 > Trends in Educational Reform Section 2 Q12 Self-monitoring and Evaluation by Each University

In order that self-monitoring and evaluation function effectively in a "planning-implementation-evaluation" cycle, each university is conducting self-monitoring and evaluation activities, and working to improve educational and research activities based on those results.

The implementation of self-monitoring and evaluation became a requirement in 1991, and, according to surveys conducted by the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture (MESSC), as of October 1998, approximately 90% of universities were implementing self-monitoring and evaluation. However, at the same time it has been pointed out that such activities have fallen into the trap of becoming nominal evaluations, which do not have a sufficient bearing on the improvement of educational and research activities, and information pertaining to evaluation has not been sufficiently transmitted beyond the universities themselves. Hence, in September 1999, the implementation of self-monitoring, self-evaluation and the announcement of results were made compulsory and the verification of results by people outside of the universities was made a requirement.

Self-monitoring and evaluation is undertaken at each university using a variety of content and methods, including:

Class evaluation by students Self-monitoring and evaluation of educational and research activities by the academic staff Appraisals performed by experts outside the university

In addition, universities are also employing a variety of methods in order to make the results of such appraisals widely available to society, such as publishing them on the Internet and preparing easy-to-understand reports using charts, graphs, and other forms of data.