Today, regional disparities in education can be seen from the following six aspects.
(1) Disparities between areas (disparities between cities or towns)
(2) Disparity inside areas (disparities between elementary school areas)
(3) Visible disparities
(4) Invisible disparities
(5) Disparities in school education
(6) Disparities in social education
Among these disparities, this paper focuses on disparities inside areas, invisible disparities, and disparities in social education. The reason is that these are the new disparities found in mergers between municipalities (a contemporary phenomenon in Japan), movements of population and the decentralization of power. In other words, under the decentralization of power, communities are called on to be economically and educationally independent from the central government, and these new disparities are related to the educational power of communities and to the power of social education connected to them.
They are also related to the urgent educational issues that must be tackled together by educational officials, people involved in schools and social education, and local residents under the decentralization of power.
The two principal directions for this task are as follows.
(1) Cooperation between schools and communities by strengthening support from educational administration to schools and communities, and strengthening cooperation involving both school education and social education.
(2) Improving the specialization of education in a broad sense. In other words, improving technical cooperation with specialists such as teachers, leaders of social education, medical personnel and welfare personnel.
These points will be crucial determinants of the success or failure of education under the decentralization of power.
In addition, the author uses data on administration in cities and towns in Shiga prefecture, which are familiar to him. Nevertheless, the manuscript consists of some guesses without actual evidence in some points; therefore it has in some sense the character of the presentation of a hypothesis.
