Objective setting and quality assurance in education have increasingly assumed weight as a policy plank. A national mechanism of objective setting and performance measurement is to be installed on the marketized and dispersed system of education. It will allow the neo-liberal thinkers to influence more directly the education system and make an effective disciplinary device of individuals and organisations. In this contribution, I want to make clearer this mechanism and logic of objective setting and quality assurance. This paper will be divided into three sections. Firstly, I will present a broad picture of the policy initiatives and practices. Secondly, drawing on the findings of research conducted in the UK and US settings, I will review the limits and harms of management by objectives and performativity. I will examine in some depth its influence on the identity of teaching professionals, and the behavioral and cultural change of organisations. Lastly, I will argue that objective setting and quality assurance in education, as is currently envisaged, will work as a hegemomic project of the state; the state will appear as a trustworthy guardian of our (i.e. the consumers of education) interest. Students of education policy should look at both material and discursive effects of the project.

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The aims of this paper are two-fold: the one is to clarify the structure of the New Institutional Economics (NIE)' arguments on the educational system and criticize them, and the other is to clarify the strengths of the alternative arguments developed by Professor Elmore. This paper characterizes NIE' s arguments as focusing on the institutional environment that exists outside schools, and identifies their strengths as combining the positive arguments and the normative. NIE's approach, however, should be criticized on the ground that, in spite of its appearance, it lacks positive arguments and its normative arguments are nothing but ideologies. Thus, the introduction of "market" as an institutional environment would never result in the high performance which NIE's approach asserts. This paper, then, analyzes the alternative approach developed by Prof. Elmore, and argues that its attraction and strengths reside in the fact that it starts from the positive arguments on the actual life of school, and derives from them the normative arguments on educational system including schools, school boards, and policy. In the conclusion, this paper identifies some lessons that educational research in Japan, where the neo-liberal education reform is taking off, should take from the two approaches: systemic education reform "from the outside in" and that "from the inside out."

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The recent educational reforms towards increased emphasis on the output of school education may bear out different consequences depending on how the academic achievement is conceived and measured. This article investigates: 1) the notion of academic achievement in the formation of modern public education, and 2) its changes in the era of Post - Welfare society, and from that perspective argues the problems involved in the reforms based on the idea of school management build upon the maximization of single-dimensional measures of achievement.

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The board of education in Shinagawa believes that schools are unable to change even if they want to for the following reasons. First, the goal of what kind of school the school wants to change into is not established clearly. Second, the plan for educational reform stops with the educational content and method, and there is no planning for a reform of the overall system. To overcome these weak points, "Plan 21" is being developed in Shinagawa. Concretely, the school selection system, "External evaluator system", "Scholastic attainments investigations", etc have been carried out. Thus, the teachers are going to have to be accountable to the taxpayer under a severe environment of school selection and evaluation. Moreover, to improve the cooperation of the elementary school and the junior high school to advance the children's scholastic attainments and character building systematically, the educational continuity from primary through, early secondary levels is advanced. the board of education tries to use "the designated structural reform district", to organize an educational process of a nine year system, and to change the teacher's consciousness into a new one so that the child will be brought up in nine years. Finally, the wish of Shinagawa Ward is to recover the mission of Public School by the power of the teachers who are working at the site of education. In the Central Education Council report in October, 2005, the review of the system concerning the compulsory education was described clearly. The results and the problems are scheduled to be sent to the whole country so that the school district reform of Shinagawa may contribute to the examination of the strategy.

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The purpose of this article is to consider the significance of putting foundations for everyday educational activities in self-governing bodies for educational reform, through an example of school management of a small scale school in a remote part of Eastern Hokkaido. Top-down methods, which are a main method in Japanese educational reform take time. However, school management that puts foundations for daily instructional activity gives teachers incentives to come up with inventive ideas. And the management makes school autonomous and stable, where teachers share the purposes of school reform with children, parents and gaurdians and local inhabitants.

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The purpose of this article is to consider the importance of curriculum reform now in the context of the whole educational reform in Japan, and to clear the way for the solution of problems. At first, I emphasize that we should recollect our own resolution to support the first course of study in 1947 and must actively emphasize its characteristic as "a tentative program" of the course of study by the ministry of education Monbusho. This means that the course of study should be a guide book to the practice by the teachers and the schools. In the article too, I point critically to several problems as to "The program of consistent education from elementary school to junior high school" by Shinagawa-kuin Tokyo. Secondly, I consider the tasks of curriculum reform in relation to the reform of the school educational system. There are conflicts between the form of the school system and the educational contents increasing in spite of the necessary of reduction and careful selection. I made sure of the basic principles to solving them, and emphasized that the focus point is still the reform of secondary education in both the system and the curriculum. Lastly, I pick out several urgent points of curriculum reform; for instance, the necessity and strategy of the restoration of the theoretical and political confusion in the territory of extra-curricular activities.

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On December 15, 2006, the Fundamental Law of Education Bill was enacted according to the original bill with the agreement only of the ruling parties, in No. 165 extraordinary session of the Diet. This new law was promulgated as the Fundamental Law of Education (Law No.120, 22 December 2006) on the 22nd of the same month, and it took effect on the same day. The Fundamental Law of Education (Law No.25, 31 March 1947) which conformed to the spirit of the Constitution of Japan, was an extremely important law that clarified the aim and principles of new Japanese education after World War H. This law was never revised for about 60 years. The new Fundamental Law of Education (2006) revised the Fundamental Law of Education (1947) overall. The purpose of this article is, firstly, to sketch out the political dynamics over "revision" of the Fundamental Law of Education, and secondly, to clarify some characteristics and problems of the new Fundamental Law of Education.

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The purpose of this thesis is to take a general view of the trends in educational law in South Korea, and to compare it with the trends in educational law in Japan. It is well known that the Fundamental Law of Education that had been maintained for 60 years after the war has been revised in Japan. In South Korea, all laws are revised. Article 31 of the South Korea constitution provides for the severe observance of the educational administration law, and laws enacted in the Diet are grounds for reform. Therefore, the law can be changed at any time. Conventional "Law on education" was divided into three (Fundamental Law of Education, the elementary and the secondary education, and the higher education Law) in 1998. The details of the process of this reform in 1998 are shown in this text. Secondarily, the text of new Fundamental Law of Education is concretely examined. The features of present South Korea law on education are clarified through this.

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Nowadays, teachers and children are thrown into confusion by competitions-based educational reform. The problems of education ("bullying", "disorder in the classroom" and "non-school attendance") keep piling up. The teacher's role expands to take on new problems and imperative mandates. Many teachers in Japan find teaching difficult today. We see a higher level of teacher's burnout. With the decline of morale of colleagues, young teachers are afraid that they might make mistakes. Under that situation, teachers and educators must rethink what education is, what schools are for and what teaching professionalism is. And they must examine and rework the structures and practices. At this point in time, we would like to notice the progress and outcome of educational reform in Finland because that reform gave teachers discretion for teaching and generated good education for all. Through a description of the Finnish case, I try to emphasize that quality of education needs, higher teaching professionalism such as knowledge, autonomy, responsibility and collegiality.

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In the early 20th century, an epidemic of tuberculosis occurred among elementary school teachers in Japan. The primary reason for the widespread outbreak of the disease was the poor conditions in which teachers worked. In addition to the high level of stress associated with the occupation, teachers' salaries were extremely low; thus, teachers gradually weakened under such conditions and became susceptible to tuberculosis infection. The infection of teachers with tuberculosis had a strong impact on students' health. Therefore, the Ministry of Education launched an investigation and implemented concrete measures. For example, such measures included the enforcement of thorough physical examinations upon students at teacher's colleges and upon employment for new teachers. In addition, a financial compensation system was established for teachers who had to resign or be absent from work due to tuberculosis infection. However, the financial compensation system, which was called the "disease treatment payment for public elementary school teachers", was not effective because the amount of the money offered was too low for teachers to live on. Therefore, many teachers concealed the fact that they were suffering from tuberculosis and continued to work.

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The purpose of this paper is to analyze the legal status and actual practices of professional educational administrators in municipal governments during the Occupation era after World War II. The paper focuses upon educational laws and regulations at both the national and municipal levels. We analyze the procedures creating the 1948 Board of Education Law in the Diet and municipal school board regulations in local government. School superintendents during the educational reform era after World War II had two different kinds of professional work. One was as a professional consultant to the Board of Education. The other was as the chief executive officer in an educational department. The school superintendent administered not only school personnel supervisory affairs but also internal school affairs such as curriculum-making and consultation. Usually regulations by the municipal school board stipulated the commission of school board powers to the superintendent. Professional educational administrators should have used their capability, as this research concludes, to have pursued the task of improving community schools by unifying teachers and people of the surrounding community.

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In China, the following 3 reforms were mainly carried out concerning public elementary and junior-high-school teacher salaries from the founding of the country in 1949 to the present. Concretely they were "job salary system" mainly introduced in 1956, "combination salary system" in 1985, and "expertise job grade salary system" in 1993. The main feature of the reforms is to set up the salary system according to the level of a teacher's capability, the level of duty, and some of achievements, gradually abolishing the egalitarian salary system operating since the founding of the country. Although the present meritocracy salary system introduced in 1993 has already gone on for more than 13 years, because there are some problems on the unpredictability of financial domain in China, on the lack of transparency of the salary system, and on the privacy of the salary system, thorough research about the system of teacher salary and practice has not been carried out yet. In this paper, I focus on the feature and the problem in practice of Chinese teacher salaries, the structure, and the difference of the teacher salary in each district and each school.

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The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effectiveness for the teacher-training course of two policies in 1990s, which were the abolishment of the system of exemption of refund and new Scholarship system that was founded by the Japan Scholarship Foundation (Nihon Ikuei- Kai). The Japan Scholarship Foundation runs an exemption system of refund for the student that becomes a teacher. However, as a reconstruction of the system, this system was abolished and the new Scholarship was established, which was more need - based than usual and was a loan which charged interest. As a result, it is found that by these reforms the ratio of the students decreased, who had the higher academic ability, the bigger possibility of becoming a teacher, and belonged to the lower-income group. And the ratio of the students increased, who did not have higher academic ability, the smaller possibility of becoming a teacher, and belonged to higher-income group. It implies the two things shown below. One is that the abolished system had been running efficiently, the other is that the new system is not compatible with "academic ability", "household economy", which are the basic idea of the Japan Scholarship Foundation.

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