Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of the national achievement test conducted in the compulsory education system starting in 2007. The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) has undertaken complete enumeration survey throughout public school (6th grade and 9th grade students) and many private schools participated in this survey. To understand the characteristics of this New National Test Regime, this paper compares the background of first-time National test in 1960s with the recent one. It was found that the recent National test regime is framed by increasing pressure of financial reconstruction, conflict between centralization and deregulation, a "low trust model" which evokes external evaluation, and a transformation of pedagogic model from one of competence to one of performance similar to the "generic mode" that Bernstein argued against. In conclusion, regulative discourses that underlie the new test regime consist of three most important components: equality of opportunity, encouragement of competition, and heralding of hyper-meritocracy. To grasp the consequence of that regime, we need to examine the relationships to/within these regulative discourses through theoretical and experimental studies.
