The education ministry plans to provide comprehensive support from this April to help the increasing number of foreign children in Japan to attend public school smoothly.

 The assistance will extend to primary, junior high and high school students. The Education, Cultural, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry will ask boards of education to prepare a registry listing the names of children of the age for compulsory education, and also to visit their homes individually if necessary.

 The ministry aims to draw up guidelines for high schools to secure a “special quota” for foreign students.

 For elementary and junior high schools, the ministry will notify boards of education in fiscal 2020 that they should: (1) provide information on school districts and procedures for entering Japanese schools at the time of resident registration; (2) create registries that list the names of children eligible for compulsory education; (3) send foreign families a guidebook for starting school; and (4) contact families by telephone or through individual visits who do not respond.

 High schools in each prefecture have their own systems for accepting foreign students, and they are not consistent. According to the education ministry, only 14 prefectures have introduced a special quota, which reduces the content of entrance exams to an essay and an interview. 

 The ministry will therefore consider formulating a guideline for expanding the scope of the quota. High school students who need Japanese language education, including foreign children, tend to have a high dropout rate, and the ministry will ask high schools and boards of education to establish follow-up systems.

 A ministry panel of experts has been studying ways to help foreign children attend school since June last year, and plans to compile a report by the end of March.

 There were 101,402 foreign students enrolled in public elementary, junior high and high schools as of May 2019, up about 40% in five years. According to one survey, 19,654 children who are of age to attend compulsory education — from 6 to 14 — are likely to have not attended school.

Challenges of learning Japanese

 Measures are urgently needed to help foreign children attend school, as an increasing number of foreign nationals are living in this country. These children can struggle to keep up with classes if they do not understand Japanese, but there are few teachers who can teach them the Japanese language.

 In a classroom of the nonprofit organization Arace in Hamamatsu last December, 15 children of foreign nationality were writing down their dreams and repeatedly practiced stating them in Japanese.

 “My dream is to be a professional gamer,” one student said. “I want to be an elementary school teacher,” another student said.

 Arace has taught the Japanese language to Brazilian and Filipino children before they go to school for 12 years now. 

 A Bolivian boy who came to Japan with his parents five months ago told The Yomiuri Shimbun through an interpreter: “I don’t understand Japanese. I want to study for another year and take a high school entrance examination.”

 He is supposed to be a third-year junior high school student but plans to attend a public junior high school in the city from January. He plans to study for one more year to take an entrance exam for high school.

 Arace representative Aiko Kanashiro said: “Foreign nationals are not subject to compulsory education, so parents often don’t understand the Japanese education system, or children can’t attend school due to language problems or for economic reasons. We need to help them get a good education.”