1. Introduction
After World War II, new junior high schools were established in many municipalities by the reform of the school education system. Later, at the time of implementing the municipal merger of Showa, many of these new junior high schools were consolidated.
2. Purpose
This paper addresses the reorganization process of public junior high schools in the Hiroshima Prefecture. It considers the effects of municipal mergers on the integration and abolition of Junior high schools up to 2010 and aims to clarify the relationship between the policy municipal merger and the consolidation of Junior high schools in the Showa and Heisei periods.
3. Conclusion
1) In Hiroshima Prefecture, new junior high schools were established by the pre-war local government bodies following policy by the minister of education. However, there were small municipalities that less than the national average population in Hiroshima prefecture. Therefore, Hiroshima Prefecture encouraged school unions with a couple of municipalities due to maintain ideal school size according to the request from local military government. As a result, the number of junior high schools operated by the school union accounts for approximately 50% of the total number of junior high schools including the number of branch schools in 1950. In addition, the number of municipalities belonging to the school union accounts for as much as 70% of the total number of municipalities.
2) Hiroshima Prefecture stipulated the merger plan to reduce the number of small municipalities. Thereby, the mergers exceeding the number of prefectural merge plan were implemented until 1961. But, the number of municipalities decreased by municipal mergers had been still short of the prefectural reducing goal. Furthermore, many junior high school unions were divided.
3) The transition of the number of students was classified by its features into 5 periods: before 1962 when the increase and decrease had been remarkable based on the war-damage recovery process and baby boom, from 1963 to 1974 during which time the number of students had rapidly decreased by the population movement in high economic growth period and fertility decline, from 1975 to 1987 during which time the number of students had increased sharply by the second baby boom, from 1988 to 2002 during which time the number of students declined continuously during a period and after 2002, the number of small scale junior high schools has been increasing in the most of municipalities . The features of the school consolidations differed depending upon the time periods.
In Hiroshima Prefecture, the administrative reactions of every local government to the new school educational system after World War IIand municipal merger in the Showa and Heisei periods has greatly influenced on the junior high school management up to the present time.
