By NORIHIKO KUWABARA/ Staff Writer
March 26, 2022 at 17:54 JST
Children of foreign residents attend a class in Kani, Gifu Prefecture. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)
Around 10,000 foreign children of compulsory school age in Japan are not receiving a formal education, according to an education ministry study that found the situation, while still grim, had vastly improved from three years ago.
A similar study in 2019 found that local education boards did not even bother to check on the status of about 10,200 children of foreign heritage.
That accounted for the bulk of the 19,471 children found not to be attending school in 2019. The latest study determined that 10,046 children were not in school as of May 2021.
While the Constitution and the Fundamental Law of Education obligate Japanese parents to place their children in school, the provision does not cover foreign nationals. However, the ministry has asked local education boards to provide appropriate schooling opportunities for children of foreign nationals, based on international treaties, such as the International Bill of Human Rights.
Residence rosters show there are about 133,000 foreign children who are of an age when they should be attending elementary or junior high school.
The education ministry contacted municipal education boards and found that the 10,046 children not in school could be classified into three broad categories.
In 649 cases, it emerged that the children were simply not going to school. The ministry found that while 8,597 children were listed on local residence registers, their whereabouts could not be confirmed when local officials, for example, visited the address listed by the parents on the register. Local education boards were unable to confirm the status of an additional 800 children, a decrease of about 9,400 from the study three years ago.
In 2019, about 20 percent of local education boards had not even compiled a roster of school-age children of foreign nationals. But that ratio has now dropped to 4 percent.
An education ministry official noted that more foreign children are attending school these days after concerted efforts to ensure they are provided with a minimum education.
Even so, the ministry found that 9.8 percent of all education boards had not mailed out notices informing parents that their children had reached an age when they should be attending school.
Japanese families automatically receive such notices when the time comes.
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