抄録
Over Ninety-five percent of lower secondary school graduates are going on to upper secondary school, today. It is said that the students enrolled vary greatly with respect to their abilities, aptitudes and interests and concerns. In order to meet the diverse needs of these students, Ministry of Education, Science and Culture (then) stated that the Ministry had been promoting uniqueness and diversity in individual schools through such measures as making increasing flexibility in the curriculum standards as prescribed in the Course of Study, so that each school might organise a unique curriculum at its discretion; giving guidance to help develop uniqueness in each school and organise schools and courses according to diverse needs and situations of students (the uniqueness and diversity policy in upper secondary education). As for university entrance examinations, universities have decreased the number of subjects that they require applicants to take. As a result, there are so many combinations of the required subjects. The purpose of this study is to find out what has the movement mentioned above brought into upper secondary schools, especially those schools that provide general courses, in the light of articulation between upper secondary education and higher education. For this purpose, two types of data were collected and analysed. First, we collected the curricula of general courses of 331 upper secondary schools. We then got the information on the subject choices of 26,125 university entrants when they were upper secondary school students. It is found that; 1) The schools either set courses for university entrance examinations or organise curricula that have subjects for university entrance examinations. 2) The schools with high university advancement rate tend to restrict elective subjects only to the areas of science, and geography and history. The students from these schools tend to restrict the number of elective subjects. 3) The schools with low university advancement rate tend to allocate many hours to particular subjects such as English and Japanese language. The students from these schools tend to restrict the number of subjects they take at university entrance examinations. 4) Students usually study not more than two subjects in science and in geography and history. 5) Some schools organise specialised curricula for entrance examinations only to private universities. It is concluded that the reform of upper secondary education and the movement of fewer required subjects in university entrance examinations have had a negative impact upon articulation between upper secondary education and higher education.
