Visit to Oppama Senior High School

Host: Minoru Kiyota

My seventh visit was to Oppama Senior High School [ss/»] to meet the assistant principal, Minoru Kiyota. Having by now visited several universities I was interested to find out about computer education within Japanese schools, so my wife arranged this visit for me. Kiyota-sensei - "sensei" means teacher in Japanese - had been an English teacher in her senior high school in Yokohama. (He wasn't her English teacher, but she was a keen badminton player and Kiyota-sensei was the badminton club organiser.)

Context...

Oppama Senior High School is one of 166 state-funded senior high schools in Kanagawa Prefecture, and there are an additional 76 private senior high schools. Kiyota-sensei told me that Kanagawa Prefecture has a population of around 8.5 million, encompassing Yokohama (the second largest city in Japan, with a population of around 3.5 million) as well as Yokosuka City (with a population of around 430 thousand). He said that Oppama is regarded as academically the second best high school within the Yokosuka region, with around 70% of students progressing directly on to some form of higher education. A proportion of the remaining 30% also subsequently progress to higher education after a year of further study and repeat examinations. He told me that this year 65% of the final year students are planning to take the nationwide "centre test", which is a pre-cursor to taking the entrance examinations for national/public universities and some private universities.

In Japan, children attend primary school from the age of 6 to 12. They then spend 3 years at junior high school, and another 3 years at senior high school. Unlike secondary schools in the UK, some senior high schools - including Oppama - cater for part-time and correspondence students as well as full-time students. Part-timers attend school after work in the evenings, and have different teachers. Students taking correspondence courses must also attend school once a week. The same certificate of achievement is awarded whatever the mode of study.

About ranking of universities and schools...

Kiyota-sensei gave me some literature relating to schools in the Kanagawa Prefecture, together with a publicity leaflet for Oppama senior high school. The publicity leaflet is particularly interesting because it reveals quite a lot about the education system in Japan as a whole. The leaflet shows the number of students who went on to study in different disciplines at national universities and at private universities, how many went on to study at vocational colleges, and how many at so-called junior colleges. The numbers of male and female students are shown separately, and there is quite a distinction between the two (the figures are for the academic year 2000/2001). Junior colleges are traditionally for girls, and indeed while 20 girls went on to study in junior colleges, none of the boys did. According to the leaflet about 50% more females than males went on to study at university, although Kiyota-sensei added that many males go on to attend university after a further year of study.

The publicity leaflet also lists the individual universities and colleges for which the school has reserved quota places for students. Prof Azuma had mentioned this quota system to me when I visited Waseda University, so it was interesting to see it from another angle. I gather that universities allocate places to schools on the basis of their academic ranking within their regions - so the notion of ranking is clearly deeply ingrained within the Japanese education system.

One of the questions I had wanted to ask Kiyota-sensei was about how universities are ranked, and whether the ranking changes much from year to year. I had the opportunity when he took me on a walk about to show me some of the school's facilities. He showed me a notice-board with a large poster pinned to it showing league tables of universities with respect to various academic disciplines. It was published by one of the largest Juku (cram school) organisations in Japan. He said that Jukus are big business in Japan. Many students attend a Juku in the evenings, at weekends - perhaps once a month - and also during summer vacation in order to receive extra tuition and get additional practice at answering exam questions. On the opposite wall there was another poster containing what appeared to be the same information published by another large Juku organisation. I asked whether the relative positions of universities change much from one year to the next, but he said they stay fairly constant.

During our walk about Kiyota-sensei also showed me another very large poster on a wall which gave details about how many students went on to study at each individual university and college last year (March 2001). There was evidently a very wide spread, with no more than five or six students going to any one particular institution. I had read previously that roughly 25% of the universities in Japan are in the Tokyo area (including neighbouring prefectures such as Kanagawa), and that most students remain living at home. So I suppose I might have seen a different picture had I visited a senior high school in a more remote location with fewer universities and colleges for the students to choose from. This reminds me that at the beginning of our discussion Kiyota-sensei had taken care to say that while he knows something about how Oppama compares with other schools in Kanagawa Prefecture, he knows less about how it compares to schools in other parts of Japan.

About examinations...

Our meeting was scheduled for 3:00pm, but when I arrived there were no students around. Kiyota-sensei said that the students had the afternoon free as they were due to have their mid-term tests the next day, which he said were "very important". I didn't query this statement at the time, but afterwards I wondered why they were so important. I suspect that there are probably two main reasons - firstly the students obviously get valuable practice and feedback in relation to taking examinations, and secondly I presume that the marks are taken into considerations when the teachers give grades and the time comes for allocating precious university quota places.

When Kiyota-sensei showed me the university ranking posters on the notice-board, he also pointed out another poster that listed the dates of the entrance examinations for individual universities. This is also very important information for the students, because it determines which combinations of university entrance examinations are feasible.

Introduction of computer literacy into the school curriculum...

Kiyota-sensei told me that from 2003 it will be mandatory for senior high schools to provide education in computer literacy (or, literally translated, "information"). Students will spend one hour per week on this in each of their first two years in the new curriculum at Oppama. The amount of time spent on computer-related education in the third year will depend on which subjects individual students opt to take. I asked Kiyota-sensei whether he thought this meant that the centre test might include computing-related questions in future, and he said he thought that did seem likely - perhaps from the year 2006, which would be consistent with the introduction of computer literacy into the curriculum for first year students in 2003. He added that basic programming questions are already included within the maths test.

In the build up to this, some senior high school teachers (mainly maths and science teachers) are now attending special courses organised by the Kanagawa Board of Education. One member of staff from Oppama is attending such a course this year.

Computing facilities...

Kiyota-sensei showed me the staff room where he and the other teachers have their desks, and introduced me to Fujita-sensei, one of the maths teachers. They took me to the computer room so that I could see the facilities. The room looked well maintained, and contained 40 PCs (40 being the normal class size). They told me that 20 of the machines were purchased in April this year, while the other 20 were purchased two years earlier. They said that these facilities were probably typical for this type of school. Some specialist schools have better facilities - in the literature Kiyota-sensei gave me it indicates that 13 of the 166 state-funded senior high schools within Kanagawa Prefecture specialise in technology. (A further five specialise in commerce, four in agriculture, and one each in nursing, foreign languages, "welfare" and "fishery".) I didn't ask about private schools, but I imagine they would probably have better facilities too.

Fujita-sensei described three examples of the way in which the facilities are used at the moment. Firstly, in the home economics class students use Excel to analyse the composition of various foods. Secondly, one of the fine arts teachers teaches aspects of graphic art using the computers. Thirdly, one of the Japanese language teachers gets the students to prepare their essays on the computers and submit them electronically. The teacher then adds comments and sends the commented essays back to the students. They told me that students in each of the three year groups get to use the computers at some stage.

The computers have web access, and Kiyota-sensei said that the final year students are allowed to use the facilities during lunch times in order to look up the websites of universities and colleges they are thinking of applying to.

I asked whether they expected to have more/better facilities in time for 2003, but they said probably not - mainly because they lacked additional space.

Computing is seen as one of the "in" professions...

When I asked about careers advice, Kiyota-sensei said that the emphasis is rather different now compared with a decade ago. In the past, the main question was "where to study?". Ambitious students (and their parents) were much more concerned about gaining entry to a prestigious university than they were about what faculty they ended up in. While some people still see things this way, others are now more inclined to ask "what to study?".

He said that computing was "in", along with other vocational subjects such as business management, social welfare, fashion, hotel management and international relations. Many of these subjects could be studied at (mainly private) colleges and universities that specialise in areas such as fashion, hotel management and catering, music, graphic art, and also computing. On the other hand, academic subjects such as English literature, Japanese literature and home economics (mainly offered by the junior colleges) have become less popular.

Miscellaneous...

Kiyota-sensei told me that state schools are considerably poorer now than they were a decade ago. One consequence of this is that most teachers have had to purchase laptop computers for their own use (at school) with their own money. He said they can't wait for the government to decide to fund this. Although he doesn't yet have web access from his desk in the staff room, he said he hopes to have this soon.

Kiyota-sensei said that the average age of teachers in Oppama senior high school is in the mid-forties. He feels this is too old, and that ideally students should have some young teachers as well as older teachers. He said that this is a widespread problem within the Japanese school system.

He also mentioned that the total student population is reducing year by year due to changing demographics - so I assume that therefore fewer teachers are needed, so relatively few young teachers enter the profession.

While the standard class size in state schools is now 40, Kiyota-sensei said that 10 years ago the standard class size was around 45, while 40 years ago it was around 50.

They have around 270 students in each year group, divided into seven classes. Each class has a "home teacher", who acts as a surrogate parent, councilor, disciplinarian etc. as well as a subject/guidance teacher. There are also four assistant home teachers per year group. These eleven home teachers accompany the year group whenever there is a school outing.

I mentioned I had read that while Japanese teenagers generally work very hard, once they become undergraduates they are often inclined to become lazy. He said this is probably true in some cases, since the most important thing is simply to gain entry to a good university.

Kiyota-sensei said that teachers in Japan generally command more respect than teachers in the USA. They work long hours, and often at weekends too - especially those who "sponsor" one of the many after-school clubs - for no extra payment. He said that every teacher has some kind of additional responsibility over and above classroom teaching.

The normal retirement age for teachers is 60. Although early retirement is possible, Kiyota-sensei said that most teachers want to work as long as they can because, in general, they enjoy their jobs and are proud to be teachers. He added that although teachers are not particularly well paid, in the current economic depression many company employees envy the job security that teachers have.

On the other hand, he said that teaching is becoming an increasingly stressful occupation - with disciplinary problems and many new assignments/projects for high schools with "special characteristics".

One positive change is that, from next year, students will no longer attend school on Saturdays. Up until now students have attended school on the first, third and fifth (if there is a fifth) Saturday every calendar month - mornings only.

Acknowledgement

I am indebted to Kiyota-sensei for checking this report, correcting some errors and supplying some additional details/text.

In his feedback he added that "many Japanese parents and students are already enjoying internet at home and taking photos with digital cameras at home. They go far ahead of computer education at schools, while the history of computer/internet education in the public school system is just at the beginning, but we are getting ready for it year by year."