Concrete measures for the next five years

Basic Approach

For the earliest possible rehabilitation and reconstruction of the areas, we must provide medium and long-term continuous support based on the needs of the affected areas, such as ensuring a secure and safe place of learning, encouraging generous support with enrollment, providing mental health care, and increasing opportunities to participate in sports.

For the creative reconstruction of the affected areas with new perspective of the Tohoku (northeast) region, educational institutions will be a center to promote following practices: development of human resources for reconstruction, city development focusing on schools, and the revitalization of local communities’ participating universities or research institutes.

In light of the lessons learned from the Great East Japan Earthquake, it is necessary to promote education that develops students’ ability to act on the basis of their own thinking and decisions when facing a difficult situation and ability to cooperate with people around them to cope with difficulties. Therefore, the government will promote the creation of futuristic education models and disaster preventive education, beginning in the affected areas and then developing them further nationwide.

Main Efforts

• Building safety nets for learning　
  - For children and young people in the affected areas, the government will encourage generous support for enrollment through financial supports such as the reduction or waiver of tuition and enrollment fees and scholarship loan programs, based on the situations or needs in the area. (Related to Basic Measure 17-5)
  - The government will continue to increase the number of teachers and placement of school counselors as a learning support or mental health care for children in the affected areas, (Related to Basic Measure 18-3)
  - The government will support ensuring the security and safety of school lunches.
  - The government will encourage measures to increase children’s opportunities to participate in sports in order to resolve the problem of lack of exercise and to encourage the sound development of children’s minds and bodies in the affected areas.
  - The government will seek to strengthen the earthquake resistance of school facilities and disaster protection functions (including earthquake resistance measures for nonstructural members) as well as countermeasures against deterioration. (Related to Basic Policy 19-1)
• Building bonds and establishing vibrant communities　
  - For the self-sustaining reconstruction of the affected areas, it is important to provide opportunities for the regeneration of the community, in which each citizen can take initiative. Therefore, support for the regeneration of the community through places of learning and Comprehensive Community Sport Clubs shall be implemented, utilizing facilities such as schools and citizens’ public halls.
  - Through the support of reinforcement of each university’s function as a local reconstruction center, the government will develops human resources for the post-earthquake reconstruction. In addition, it will restructure local communities in the affected areas and advance the regeneration of local industry and medical services.
• Developing skills for surviving in society after the earthquake disaster　
  - In light of the lessons learned from the Great East Japan Earthquake, the government will enrich disaster prevention education, which cultivates a proactive attitude to predict and avoid risk for oneself. (Related to Basic Measure 19-2)
  - The government will promote education to encourage a correct understanding of radiation. (Related to Basic Policy 1-4)
  - Based on the needs of human resources in the affected areas, which have significantly changed due to the earthquake disaster, the government will encourage reinforcement of the framework to advance cultivation and placement in the areas of work-ready experts or their successors for the reconstruction.
• Developing human resources who achieve creative reconstruction
  - In light of the lessons learned from the Great East Japan Earthquake, the government shall advance efforts for recovery education by developing and promoting the new educational model that is emerging from the distinctive education activity in the affected areas. (Related to Basic Measure 1-4)