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After more than 75 years, the Okayama PTA Association, which includes parent-teacher associations in Okayama Prefecture, will dissolve at the end of this fiscal year due to a significant drop in membership.

This will mark the first time a prefectural-level PTA association has dissolved in Japan, according to the education ministry.

The decision to disband was made at an extraordinary general meeting in April, driven by a decline in membership fees and the inability to cover operating costs.

The Okayama PTA Association was established in 1948.

It was made up of county and city PTA associations from across the prefecture, with parents and teachers as members.

In fiscal 2008, all 21 county and city PTA associations in the prefecture belonged, totaling around 180,000 members.

However, by fiscal 2024, membership has dwindled to roughly 9,000 from only five associations.

Efforts were made to manage finances by raising the annual membership fee from 30 yen (21 cents) per member in fiscal 2008 to 130 yen. But carryover funds and reserves will only cover costs until the end of this fiscal year, with deficits expected in the next fiscal year.

Many of the departing associations cited the burden of fulfilling executive roles and not seeing benefits that matched the membership fees.

The Okayama PTA Association will also leave the national body, the Japan PTA National Council, by the end of the year.

On Sept. 2, the Okayama PTA Association posted a comment from its president, Toshikazu Kanda, on its website: “We were unable to halt the sharp decline in our membership and have determined that we can no longer continue our activities.”

MANY LOWER-LEVEL PTAs WITHDRAWING

PTAs across the country operate in a pyramid structure, with the Japan PTA National Council at the top. Prefectural associations are beneath that, followed by municipal PTA associations and councils, and then individual elementary and junior high school PTAs.

However, an increasing number of local associations and councils have been withdrawing from the national body in recent years.

In 2023, the Tokyo Elementary School PTA Council withdrew from the national body. In 2024, the Chiba City PTA Council and the Saitama City PTA Council followed suit.

The Chiba Prefecture PTA Council is currently preparing to withdraw.

Similarly, municipal PTAs have been withdrawing from their respective prefectural PTA councils.

In 2019, the Nara City PTA Association left the prefectural PTA council.

In 2022, the Kochi City Elementary and Junior High School PTA Association followed suit due to rising shared fees.

These city associations now operate as independent entities.

But the Kusatsu City PTA Council withdrew from the Shiga Prefecture PTA Council in 2021 and later dissolved.

In Saitama Prefecture, only 16 of the 62 municipal PTA councils remain part of the prefectural PTA association, excluding Saitama city, which operates independently as a government ordinance-designated city.

The main reasons for these withdrawals are to reduce the membership fees paid to higher organizations and to ease the burden on executive members attending their meetings.

Some PTA councils cited concerns about the governance of the Japan PTA National Council, which reported a deficit of around 47 million yen in fiscal 2022.

“With the rise in dual-income households, more people are finding it difficult to dedicate time to PTA activities,” said a representative from a PTA council in the Kanto region that withdrew from a higher organization this fiscal year.

“We just don’t have the capacity to take on activities for higher organizations. I think it’s just the way things are these days,” the representative said.

(This article was written by Kunio Ozawa, Masayasu Kamiyamasaki, Miki Kobayashi and Mami Okada.)

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