2025 Volume 92 Issue 1 Pages 27-39
In August 1984, the Ad Hoc Council for Education (AHCE) was established by Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro, as an advisory council to the Prime Minister on educational reform. This paper analyzes the political process developing a promotional framework of educational reform after the AHCE from roughly April 1987 to June 1989, in order to reveal what framework each actor considered so as to bring about the content of the AHCE's reports. This analysis suggests that the failure to form this framework affected the process of educational reform in the 1990s.
From April 1987 on, the Working Committee of the AHCE and the Working Group drafting its final report considered a promising plan for a framework which would promote educational reform after the AHCE and rapidly bring about the content of their reports. The plan was to reorganize the Central Council for Education (CCE), an advisory council to the Minister of Education which had been suspended during the AHCE, in order to follow up on the reports. This plan was discussed at the General Meeting of the AHCE to almost no objections and some agreement. Around the same time, Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) members with influence on educational policy also agreed that the party and the Ministry of Education (MoE) would be cores of the reform promotion framework, using the Ministry Council.
However, on July 21, Nakasone, who was approaching the end of his term as Prime Minister, told AHCE chair Okamoto Michio and Minister of Education Shiokawa Masajuro that since the reform promotion framework needed to be politically decided, the phrasing of the final report should leave room for choice. In response to this, ultimately, the AHCE's final report (submitted to Nakasone on August 7, 1987) did not specifically refer to a framework or organs promoting educational reform.
After Nakasone's negotiations, a succeeding council for the AHCE was eventually agreed upon, marking the end of Nakasone's term as Prime Minister. The subsequent Takeshita Noboru administration promoted educational reform; a bill establishing the succeeding council was submitted to the Diet on March 15, 1988. However, the LDP and the MoE looked on it negatively, while the Japan Socialist Party and the Japanese Communist Party directly opposed it. In the end, it was abandoned in the 114th Diet.
As a result, since the CCE remained unreorganized and no succeeding council was established, there was no organization to promote educational reform generally after the AHCE. Additionally, establishing the University Council and the Lifelong Learning Council based on the AHCE's reports had reduced the CCE's scope of authority. Thus, in the 1990s, educational reform policies were made separately by the authority-reducing CCE and the existing councils by policy areas of the MoE. This policy-making system was different from today's system as created by the Central Government Reforms of 2001.
