This paper examines the negative effect of the trilateral reforms promoted by central government and aims to propose decentralized reform ideas for financing compulsory education. The current progress of the trilateral reforms seems to deviate from the focus of the reforms with regard to the independence and soundness of financing from local government. Central government gives top priority to transfer sources of tax to local governments and to a reduction of state liability and subsidies in order to secure sources of revenue. As a result, the disparity of general revenue sources has increased among local governments. In order to correct this situation, the central government delays reform of local tax-allocation methods. The most important issue is to postpone the solution of problems of local tax-allocation methods that impair the independence and soundness of financing from local government because of the above situation. Based on the awareness of this problem, this paper examines the negative effect of the trilateral reforms promoted by central government and demonstrates the following analysis and proposes the establishment an education-specific subsidy system that would ensure a "national minimum" for compulsory education. 1. The current local tax-allocation methods provide local governments with both a revenue source guarantee function to ensure a "national minimum" and a finance adjustment function to correct tax revenue disparity among local governments. Because arbitrary amalgamation of these two functions continues, these methods have acquired strong characteristics as policy incentive subsidies to develop local economies and promote business conditions since 1985 and the amount of subsidy has skyrocketed. 2. Because the current financial crisis in local governments resulted from this mechanism of tax allocation and its operation, it is desirable to establish systems assuring revenue sources and financial adjustments to guarantee a new "national minimum" by separating the revenue source guarantee function from the financial adjustment function and abolishing the current tax allocation system and the national government's share of compulsory education costs. 3. Specifically, this paper proposes the establishment of an education-specific subsidy system that would ensure a "national minimum" for compulsory education. Consequently, central government sets the standard of a "national minimum" for compulsory education and provides local governments with the necessary revenue sources as comprehensive subsidies. Local governments can implement the creative operation of compulsory education based on the "national minimum." Consequently, it becomes possible to clarify the roles and responsibilities of the central and local governments.

抄録全体を表示

Some observers say that the government has the policy to deregulate the whole system of public education and decentralize educational decision-making, though Japanese school system has been highly centralized traditionally. They believe that the decentralization and deregulation policy will help to reform public schools. For example, the national government has the legal liability to pay half of the elementary and junior high teachers' salary. It has contributed to realize the equal opportunity of education for all students regardless of the funding ability of their own municipalities. But, for some observers, it has prevented local governments from developing their own educational policies. So they insist on abolishing the national funding system for compulsory school teachers' salary, deregulate the teacher allocation standards and give the prefectural government more funds with discretionary powers. I think these observers may overlook the real nature of these policies. From my point of view, the deregulation policy will organize the education system more competitively and create serious gaps between the wealthy municipalities and the poor municipalities, high-income families and low-income families. It will make the educational opportunity highly unequal and extremely unfair. Moreover, the decentralization policy will help to exempt the national government from the liability to achieve the national minimum of the public education and transfer it to the local governments. The decentralization policy will not give them more autonomy at all. Under the deregulation and decentralization, the local government will have less funds for their public schools and more liabilities to convince the students and parents of poor public education. Now each local government should realize the liabilities to achieve the welfare of their citizen again, exercise the autonomy to manage the public school according to the local consensus, and protest the national government's policy if necessary.

抄録全体を表示

Since the 1990's the governments in the Western developed countries have stressed education reforms, in particular, reform of the secondary school system, which is caused by (1) the restructuring of the capitalist economy, (2) the re-organisation of the capitalist state, (3) the disparity between economic/political systems and the existing education system, (4) the anxiety and discontent in the people's "life world", and (5) the political strategy by the dominant forces to recover the political legitimacy. However, these education reforms have found four paths: a social democratic- welfare statist, a conservative- corporatist, a neoliberal- market competitionist, and a communitarian-localist. Among them, this article focuses on the education reforms in the UK under the Blair government since 1997, which are the mixture of neoliberal (to a major extent ) and social democratic (to a minor extent) measures. Section 1 gives an overview on the education budgets under the Blair governments 1997-2006 and points to several strengthened state interventions by the central government, rather than the local governments and education authorities (LEA), to the secondary schools within public sector ("state schools" in UK). Section 2 examines the Education and Inspection Bill 2006 which could convert an ordinary local school with public sector (so-called "comprehensive school" or "community school") into a new specialist school by a private provider ("city academy" and "trust school"); promote "parental choice" and "competition among schools"; and let the LEA powers shrink. And Section 3 studies the case of Islington (one of the inner-city areas in London), where the LEA is "privatised", and "parental choice and school choice" is implemented, and the conversion of a comprehensive school into a city academy is proposed. Section 4 sketches another policy of "London Challenge" in the inner-city areas to promote the high quality public service (schooling) through the social democratic centralist intervention. Even though there is a strong drive to the neolibeal centralist intervention mentioned above, this article also pays attention to some communitarian education movements which try to reconstruct good, local, comprehensive schools, within the public sector, controlled democratically by the LEA and local governments as well as parental participation.

抄録全体を表示

Although many educational reforms, which generously aim to recovery the 'legitimacy' of education systems, have been carried out rapidly in Japan for several years, we have not discussed enough how to evaluate them yet. This paper will focus on how we should evaluate educational reforms now. We know that there are two approaches to policy evaluation, 'performance evaluation' and 'evaluation research'. But nowadays, there are serious imbalances between them: in most central and local governments, policies are evaluated not by research but by performance, which cannot evaluate the adequacy or validity of the policy. I propose the third way of evaluation, 'participative evaluation', which is a reflective approach by those, who are participants of the policy-making and policy processes. When policy is made participately, various agents, for example administrator, principals, teachers, parents, citizen, and students, participate to evaluate, too. And it may be possible to make better and wider agreement of the policies through discussions with them. The two contrastive educational reforms, which are carried out by Tokyo metropolitan and Kochi prefecture, are also contrastive on the possibility of 'participative approach', on the one hand there is little possibility in Tokyo, and the other hand there is relative much in Kochi.

抄録全体を表示

In this essay, I propose that the system for the evaluation of education policies should include the evaluation of state subsidies for compulsory education as one of those policies. Under the present system, neither Government nor local authorities have an administrative system in place for the evaluation of state subsidies for compulsory education. On the presupposition that significant regional economic differences will continue to exist, there is a view that Government will be obliged to maintain a system of subsidies for compulsory education. Compulsory education, one of the areas of autonomic local control, can and should play an important role in decreasing the size of regional gaps and fostering a prosperous local society. It is therefore essential to consider how Government and local government can create a cooperative relationship in education issues. For this same reason, it is necessary to establish a system for the evaluation of education policies and, within that, a system for the evaluation of effectiveness of subsidies for compulsory education.

抄録全体を表示

An evaluation of an existent change in legislation, like a revision of the Fundamental Law of Education, should be based on the standard which is different from an evaluation of administrative policy. When the Fundamental Law of Education was promulgated, it was thought that relations between the public education and the people in a democratic nation should be composed by the following three principles; 1. the peoples sovereign power principle, 2. securing the independence of education, and 3. decentralization of educational administration. In order to correspond to the development of the postwar Japanese society and to the educational ideals such as the Recommendation concerning the Status of Teachers and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, this second principle can be thought as being a request for a democratic educational system in which teachers and children or/and parents participate to the public decision making. The third is a principle which the two other principles are applied to in a unified way, and at present it can be regarded as a part of the "local autonomy of the public education." When deliberations and reports of the Central Council for Education about revision of the Fundamental Law of Education are evaluated based on the above-mentioned criterions, they clearly lack almost any consideration for the second principle, and the attention to application of the first principle is insufficient too. So the revision of the law based on this report should be stopped. After having made the above-mentioned decision making participation system, the people's sovereign power may be approved to reform educational system including the revision of the Fundamental Law of Education.

抄録全体を表示

Recently some universities have associated with municipalities to assist in the development of their communities. While universities will benefit through opportunities for learning and researching in communities, municipalities can also benefit from student participation in community policies and activities. With this background, The School of Human Science and Environment (SHSE) of the University of Hyogo has associated itself with Kamigori-cho, Kamikawa-cho and Kami-cho in Hyogo prefecture. Students of SHSE study the policies of these municipalities and participate in activities in their respective communities. For example, the students learn about lifelong learning in the aging community, policies for nature preservation, festivals and the life style. One memorable event last year was student participation in "Yume-Festa" in Kamigori-cho. The students participated in the whole process, from its planning until they actually ran the event. Other students joined the "Yuki-gassen" (Snowball fight) in Kami-cho this year. They enjoyed games with people in the local community, and learned the significance of sports in Kami-cho. We hope that students will know more about local communities and about life there. We also hope that students learn from such experiences to be good members of their own communities in their future. Yoshio Tohi, a famous educator born in Hyogo prefecture, said in the 1950's that we must nurture boys and girls who would contribute to the development of local communities. We still agree with him even at the present time.

抄録全体を表示

In the Netherlands, schools based on religion or beliefs are fully subsidised by the government and are equally treated as public schools. This type of school is called "special school". This is the fundamental and structural characteristic of the Dutch "Freedom of Education". Since 1988, the number of Islamic schools has increased as a result of the demand by Muslim parents who were originally labour immigrants and their families. The Islamic schools are categorised as one of the "special schools". In other words, Islamic schools embody the characteristics of the Dutch "Freedom of Education". The current number of Islamic schools in the Netherlands comes to more than 45, which is one of the largest in Western Europe. Recently, the principle of "Freedom of Education" has been reinterpreted in the discussion over the question of Islamic schools, as it is concerned that they function negatively to the social integration of Muslim children. This paper analyses the opinion of major parties towards Islamic schools and the concept of "Freedom of Education". In conclusion, it is shown how the "Freedom of Education" might show a changing tendency in near the future in relation to an introduction of a stronger integration policy.

抄録全体を表示

There have been many criticisms concerning school board systems in our country. One of them goes as follows: School boards are isolated from mayors and mayors' offices and therefore mayors often find themselves in the situation that they can neither take initiatives nor have influence on educational policies. In this paper, to empirically verify how much validity these criticism have, we try to make clear the relationships between mayors and school boards, by describing how mayors interact with board members, superintendents and central office staff and, how and in what ways mayors commit themselves to educational policy processes. The data we use are interview data collected, August in 2004, as a part of research on operational realities of local school boards. The samples are mayors of 18 cities, 7 towns, and 1 village selected from Kanto Area (Ibaraki, Tochigi, Saitama, Chiba, and Kanagawa). Major findings are: Mayors frequently interact with superintendents and central office staff and keep themselves informed with educational problems in their communities. Mayors respect the ideals of independence of educational government from general government, and they let school boards function autonomously and when needed, they actively intervene in educational policy processes.

抄録全体を表示

Okinawa's Board of Education built a public election system to chose all the Education committees by the referendum. However, when the administration was handed over from America to Japan, the system of Board of Education in Okinawa had to adopt the Japanese way of choosing the Education committees. That means it changed from referendum to designation by the mayor. When the system changed, Okinawa suggested the way to reflect citizen's will. It is to nominate few people from various associations for the governor to designate. However, this designation system gradually got outworn and became a formal thing. Now, the system in Okinawa no longer has its originality.

抄録全体を表示

The purpose of this study is to search for the direction of the higher education decentralization policy in Japan. Therefore, the following is analyzed. It is concerned with higher education in the region, and the action of the local government that promotes a positive policy. There are three prefectures (Akita Prefecture, Nagano Prefecture, and Tottori Prefecture) where the development of higher education was comparatively late. The public college was set up, and the higher education administration of the prefecture is carried out by governor's leadership and administrative reform in each prefecture. But, there are various forms. A private university is encouraged to set up and is provided with financial support. However, the degree of the participation of the local government is widespread and is strengthened for not only the public college but also the private university. It is easy for it to disturb the development of higher education. The realities of the local higher education policy under the decentralization reform show this.

抄録全体を表示