Photo/Illutration Students use digital textbooks in a research class at Koganei Elementary School, affiliated with Tokyo Gakugei University, on July 9. (Asako Miyasaka)

The education ministry will introduce digital English textbooks at elementary and junior high schools in Japan from the 2024 school year.

Student will use digital textbooks via computers and tablets, with the textbooks having the same content as the bound textbooks.

The textbooks will not go fully digital for the time being--the schools will utilize both digital and bound textbooks.

A working group of the Central Council for Education, an advisory body to the education ministry, approved the interim report draft on Aug. 25 that includes the use of digital English textbooks for fifth-graders in elementary school up to third-year junior high school students starting in the 2024 school year.

The ministry will then consider introducing digital math textbooks in the 2025 school year after considering how much digital English textbooks are being used.

The draft said the textbook functions should be simple to avoid overloading the schools’ telecommunications capabilities. There should also be functions such as adding furigana, phonetic characters, and magnifying the words for foreign students and those who have disabilities.

It should also be free, as are bound textbooks, the draft stated.

The ministry provided digital English textbooks to almost all schools--from fifth-graders at elementary school to third-year students at junior high schools--for free in the 2022 school year as part of a trial, along with digital textbooks on one other subject that the schools requested. 

Thirty percent of the elementary schools chose a digital math textbook, with 23 percent of junior high schools opting for math.

Many schools are stuck in an analog world of paper.

The ministry distributed digital textbooks on a trial basis to around 40 percent of elementary and junior high schools in the 2021 school year and to almost all public elementary and junior high schools the following school year.

A textbook company employee faced a series of hurdles after the digital textbooks were distributed. 

For example, the employee asked each school to send a receipt for the textbooks via email but got few replies possibly because the schools were not used to exchanging emails.

The employee had to send the request to many schools through the mail.

Communication environments also differ from school to school, with digital textbooks freezing in some schools when students use them all at once, and others being unable to use them most of the time.

There are concerns that some municipalities might not receive digital study materials and learning support software, which have functions such as video, due to the financial situations of their local governments.

The education ministry said it will continue to discuss whether the central government should provide support for such materials.

What digital materials the government should distribute as “textbooks” is also being questioned.

In the trial distribution, the text-to-speech function in English was highly evaluated, but the voices of native speakers or actors are considered to be study materials, which cost for usage, due to copyright issues. Video materials are also deemed as study materials.

The more materials that come at a cost become available, the more disparities will emerge between municipalities, depending on whether they have the financial resources to use them.

(This article was written by Norihiko Kuwabara and senior staff writer Asako Miyasaka.)

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