BY YUKA HONDA/ Staff Writer
September 10, 2023 at 12:19 JST
Students arrive at Hibiya High School in Tokyo on Feb. 21 to take the entrance examination. (Yuka Honda)
Tokyo will eliminate gender-based quotas for high school entrance examinations, effective next spring, making it the last among the nation’s 47 prefectural-level governments to do away with the requirement, according to well-placed sources.
The board of education’s new rule will apply to current third-year junior high school students seeking admission to co-educational public high schools, the sources said.
Tokyo had faced withering criticism for continuing with the policy as the rest of the country was scrapping rules deemed to be “contrary to gender equality.”
Separate quotas will be abolished in both general and recommended entrance examinations.
The Tokyo metropolitan government and the Tokyo Association of Private Junior and Senior High Schools will hold a public-private liaison council meeting on Sept. 11 to formalize the agreement.
The board of education implemented a gradual shift to a joint admission system for male and female students in 2021. As a mitigating measure, it established a “joint quota” of 10 percent for the 2022 entrance examination and 20 percent for this year under which students were accepted or rejected based on their grades, regardless of gender.
By eliminating gender-based quotas, the number of boys accepted into metropolitan high schools is expected to drop by approximately 600, according to a board estimate released in 2021.
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