The purpose of this paper is as follows: First, it describes how the Prime Minister rejected the appointments of certain candidates to be members of the Science Council of Japan last year and how the Japan Educational Administration Society, headed by the author of this paper, reacted to the rejection. Secondly, this paper points out why the rejection of nominated candidates constitutes a violation of the constitution and concerned statutes and analyzes how this disapproval has important consequences for academic administration and educational administration in Japan. Finally, it offers the Japan Educational Administration Society some recommendations about its academic activities. The paper consists of the following:

I The purpose of this paper

II The circumstances of the case: The rejection of appointments to the Science Council of Japan by the Prime Minister

III The Japan Educational Administration Society's reaction regarding this case

IV Unconstitutionality and illegality of the case

(1) Violation of “Academic Freedom” of the Constitution

(2) Violation of the Science Council of Japan Act

(3) Violation of the Cabinet Act

(4) Violation of the Procedures of Administration Act

The Actual Conditions and Serious Problems of Academic Administration and Educational Administration in Japan

V Serious problems of academic administration and educational administration caused by this case

(1) Risk of interference in university autonomy

(2) Concealment of the essence of the problems by changing of the points at issue and the real intention

(3) Increase in political control of education

(4) People's low concern about the case and responsibility of scholars and educators

VI Conclusion: Recommendations for the Japan Educational Administration Society

On August 31, 2020, the Science Council of Japan recommended 105 candidates as new members, according to the Science Council of Japan Act, Article 7. However, the Prime Minister did not appoint six of these candidates as new members. In addition, he did not explain in detail the reason for not approving these candidates. The Japan Educational Administration Society, together with other academic societies, complained to the Prime Minister about the unjustness of rejecting these appointments. The Prime Minister's rejection of these appointments to the Science Council of Japan is clearly unconstitutional and illegal, and he should repeal the decision and immediately appoint them as members.

This case shows that political control has gradually increased in academic administration and educational administration in Japan. The arrogance of the present government and its party, which have retained political power for a long time, exists in the background of this case. The democratically elected government and the current ruling party have violated “Academic Freedom” secured by the constitution. This means that “Democracy” itself already has become a dead letter. Due to the COVID-19 global pandemic, the Japanese people's concern about this case is not high. However, it is part of the mission of scholars and educators to help people to comprehend the indispensability of “Academic Freedom” for a democratic state; hence the writing of this paper.

The catastrophe caused by COVID-19 confirmed at the end of 2019, has quickly spread all over the world. This shows how globalized society is.

Protecting children's health and education from COVID-19 is a common goal of all countries. However, there may be differences in their education policies and measures to combat COVID-19. There may also be particular differences in the characteristics of educational administration. Due to the state of emergency in each country, certain characteristics that are usually hidden or hard to see in normal times have become apparent in educational administration and compulsory education.

The purpose of this article is to clarify what kind of characteristics of educational administration and compulsory education system as well as what kind of issues have been addressed during COVID-19. Therefore, the educational policies of France (Section 2), Spain (Section 3), Germany (Section 4), and Japan (Section 5) are overviewed. In the conclusion, a brief comparison of these countries (section 6) is made.

There is a premise that there are differences in the characteristics of compulsory education. However, it has been clarified that the different measures to combat COVID-19 in these four countries are greatly influenced by the differences in the educational administration of each country. Unlike France, which defines the compulsory education system as an “obligation to education” where homeschooling is accepted, Spain and Germany, like Japan, define it as “compulsory schooling”. Nonetheless, it has become clear that even the three countries Spain, Germany and Japan, which have the same “compulsory schooling” system, have structural differences in educational administration, including the allocation of central-local authorities.

Comparing France, Spain, Germany and Japan from the following eight points, the characteristics and issues of educational administration in each country have been clarified as well. (1) Classification of compulsory education system, (2) Autonomy of educational administration, (3) Educational participation by the parties concerned, (4) The authority to initiate school closure, (5) Support from infectious disease specialized institutions, (6) Protective measures for vulnerable groups, (7) Recognizing teachers as essential workers, and (8) Shortening school holidays to “recover” education loss.

COVID-19 is not over. It still has a serious impact on everyone and continues to affect a child's development with long-term challenges around the world, including education. There is no doubt that COVID-19 has given children awareness and opportunities for a lot of experiences that children cannot normally have. The trying and stressful time for children may be a treasure trove of learning. There must be “something” that can be evaluated as positive from these experiences. If only the systematic educational programs and the curriculum prepared by adults are recognized as “learning” and that, in a way, prevents “learning” from the variety of natural experiences that children are having now, this may be an area of compulsory education that needs to be addressed.

While Japan has adopted a policy of reducing class sizes in elementary schools starting in 2022, the supply of teachers has become a policy issue. In some regions, schools are unable to supply enough teachers of sufficient quality. However, until recently, policy makers did not recognize teacher supply as a policy issue. There are two possible reasons for this. First, the supply of teachers has not been organized in terms of labor economics. Secondly, policies on teacher supply have been made at both the national and local levels without the use of specialized knowledge.

Since the 2000s, while national standards for teacher recruitment have hardly improved, local governments have gained more discretion in the number of teachers hired and their salary levels. Many local governments have slashed the employment levels of teachers in order to increase the number of teachers in the face of financial constraints. However, the overall employment situation was poor, and the hiring ratio of teachers remained high. Therefore, the number of prospective teachers did not decrease even though the employment level was lowered, and a certain level of quality of the personnel was secured despite the poor employment conditions. Later, while the economy was recovering, the demand for teachers continued on a large scale. However, the local government continued to recruit teachers mainly from new graduates, so it could not secure enough teacher applicants and the hiring rate decreased.

The failure of "evidence-based policymaking" in education policy to function well at the national and local levels, respectively, has created challenges for teacher supply. In examining the supply of teachers at the national level, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) has been in a weak position in "evidence-based policymaking" because it has not been able to navigate the politics of the legitimacy of evidence. On the other hand, in examining teacher supply at the local level, the relationship between employment levels and teacher availability was not examined. In the absence of evidence, policy decisions have been made with an emphasis on appealing to residents rather than on improving the educational environment and educational outcomes.

In educational administration research, it is necessary to analyze the issues of teacher supply by using the findings of labor economics. It is also necessary to discuss such issues as whether to hire mid-career teachers in addition to the conventional batch hiring of new graduates, and to what extent to tighten the teacher training education and qualification system. These issues are also related to the mobility of the labor market for teachers and the development of their skills after they are hired. It is also important to analyze how expertise and evidence on teacher supply are reflected in policy formulation and implementation at the national and local levels. It is believed that teacher supply policies based on ideas alone, without the use of expertise, will detract from addressing current policy issues.

This paper aims to clarify how teachers' expertise is discussed in local assemblies.

As observed in discussions about teacher expertise, there has been critical opinion about the professional duty of teachers. The local assembly councilor is an elected officer similar to the mayor. This means that they are answerable to citizens in the local government. The local assembly is based on local autonomy law, and so the assembly councilor must be chosen by election.

Accordingly, the municipal councilor's election ward operates in a multimember constituent electoral system for the whole municipality. Under this electoral system, it is necessary for complaints to be made about any differences by candidates with similar claims, and it should also be pointed out that this limits the possibility of collaboration after the election. Significantly, it is notable that differences of opinion are less likely to occur regarding educational policies.

With this in mind, this paper considers how teacher expertise was discussed focusing on the assembly of the city designated by ordinance. The city designated by ordinance holds the authority to manage its own teacher personnel. This approach is the most suitable for observation. Specifically, 14 cities designated by ordinance were accessed in the web-based Hansard House of Assembly, and their extracted discussions on the expertise of teachers were used in this research.

As a result, it is suggested that there are few remarks about teachers, and there are few discussions on their expertise. In the aforementioned analysis of Hansard, it is also observed that when there were cases of a teacher involved in an accident at the time, the remarks then increased, and the number of remarks increased or decreased according to the level of interest of individual councilors.

Furthermore, some councilors appear to have deepened their expert knowledge on education and ask questions requiring a level of expertise. Although it is thought that high-level professional remarks are the result of actions based on some profits, this finding should not be seen as negative. One reason for consideration is that procuring democratic legitimacy for educational policy demands intervention from highly knowledgeable councilors.

One aim of this paper was to ascertain how policies to implement informatization of schools would be formulated by different policymakers pursuant to policies to create a Digital Society. A second aim was to identify issues that would subsequently arise in educational administration.

Policies to create a Digital Society originated with the concept of “Society 5.0” in the mid-2010s. Those policies have been rapidly promoted as lifestyles, attitudes, and the nature of society have changed in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Policies to implement informatization of schools were similarly promoted as part of the same policies to create a Digital Society. Policies to implement informatization of schools sought to implement methods of education that did not heretofore exist and to expand educational opportunities. Those policies are evolving into a concept of more radical school reform. In other words, restructuring of the existing system of education as was previously accepted (e.g. standard class hours, grades, and years) and the relationship between public and private education (the private education industry and homeschooling) is approaching in the form of “Adaptive Learning” and “Data-driven Education.” Those concepts were conceived by and are being promoted by policymakers outside of educational administration such as the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), the Office of the Prime Minister, and the Cabinet Office. There are two factors underlying that situation. The first is the fact that the Prime Minister's Office has played a stronger leadership role in policymaking since the second Abe Administration of the 2010s. The second is that the crux of policies promoted by the Prime Minister's Office is comprehensive and active support for business, i.e. “a growth strategy.” Policies to create a Digital society lie at the heart of that strategy.

Based on that system of policy implementation, policies to implement informatization of school (as part of policies to create a Digital Society) have advanced through the following 4 stages. Educational technology, or EdTech, has been developed by private entities such as social entrepreneurs and large educational companies since the 2000s. In the first stage, METI incorporated EdTech in its policies, and the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) devised policy concepts in conjunction with that move by METI. In the second stage, policies devised by MEXT and METI to implement informatization of school were authorized by the Prime Minister's Office and implemented. In the third stage, policies to implement informatization of schools (provision of distance learning) were required as part of efforts to prevent infection during the COVID-19 pandemic, and policies to implement informatization of school as part of a growth strategy were accelerated in conjunction with those policies. The growth strategy in question had been promoted prior to COVID-19. In the fourth stage, a transition to “Data-driven Education” was initiated as an educational concept with an eye toward circumstances after COVID-19.

The policies to implement informatization of schools that have thus developed have raised fundamental questions about educational administration, such as what role MEXT should play and the nature of its existence. Restructuring of education as part of a national growth strategy is urgently needed given the primary goal of economic growth. However, what MEXT needs to do is to determine the fundamental nature of the relationship between humans and education, which is considered to be immutable despite the increasing adoption of digital and information technologies in society and schools and which is completely irrelevant to value in the economic realm. MEXT should envision and implement an educational system grounded in that relationship.

The purpose of this paper is to consider what is happening in today's crisis situation, and what are the challenges of educational administration in it. This paper regards the situation in which the basic concept on which educational administration has been based is as a state of crisis.

The legitimacy of decision-making is secured by the concept of sovereignty, which is the normative basis of all positive law of the state and the source of legitimacy that brings normativeness to governance. However, sovereignty and governance are often in conflict, and there is tension between them. Governance behavior tends to be self-reliant from the sovereignty that should underpin it. When the superiority of governance over sovereignty deepens, a situation called an "exceptional condition" occurs. The current situation can be regarded as an exceptional condition. An "exceptional condition" is a condition that does not fit into the legal order, and the problem is the relationship between law and reality. Reasonable judgment is important in such situations.

Legal norms are based on the purpose rationalism of forming order. Even if the purpose is to form an order that benefits all people based on universal values by reason, various phenomena can occur in order to embody it, and there irrational forces inevitably work.

In recent years, the post-truth situation has become a problem. It refers to situations where subjective perception is more important than objective facts. Information such as letters, photos, videos, etc. is being distributed to an overwhelming extent on social media, but this conveys not only a linguistic message that has undergone authenticity judgment, but also an image that appeals to emotions. This has created a situation where "real things", not reality, were "repeated" as an experience of "images".

The purpose of public education, such as the formation of national society and economic development, is clearly set, and education is carried out rationally and efficiently to achieve these goals. It is difficult for public education to be free from the purpose rationalism of realizing its philosophy. Education always has an emotional side. Since public education will be promoted from a rational point of view, it is necessary to question the limits of reason.

Today, the digitization of society is accelerating. As an example, digital textbooks are about to be introduced in school education. It will be necessary to carefully analyze how these changes in the environment will affect children's learning and growth.

When trying to realize today's institutional philosophy of public education, it is inevitable that there will be a gap between that philosophy and reality. It is necessary to ask how to perceive the gap between the idea and the reality. The issue of educational administration is whether or not it is possible to freely engage in public education from the purpose rationalism. Educational administration may need to work on the subject of elusive emotions. If it does so, the future task is to enrich the research of educational administration by exchanging with a wide range of academic research such as academic research targeting emotions and academic research targeting people.

The purpose of this paper is to clarify how school consolidation is reflected in teacher assignments at individual schools, on the administrative issue of school consolidation and teacher personnel transfers faced by a certain municipality (X City, Z Prefecture). It will also raise the question of how educational administration can respond to this issue in the future.

For the analysis, we used documents related to the city administration, the yearly edition of the "Z Prefecture School Personnel Records," and the "Personnel Changes in Teachers" at the end of each fiscal year published in various newspapers, etc. In addition, 1,438 teachers and staff members who were assigned or transferred to elementary schools in X City during the 18-year period from 2003 to 2020, before and after the consolidation of schools, were included in the analysis.

Based on the above data and analysis, the following conclusions were drawn. In the consolidation of elementary schools in X City against the backdrop of a decrease in the number of children and the merger of towns and villages, the aim was to ensure the stability of children's school life in the integrated schools and the continuity of educational activities from the former elementary schools. The basic policy on teacher allocation, which was outlined in the "Basic Plan for School Reallocation" compiled from the discussions of the study committees and their subcommittees in each of the six former towns, strongly regulated the allocation of teachers to the integrated schools.

This was evident from the following actual conditions at the integrated schools in the year of integration. (1) More than 80% of the teachers were from the former elementary schools, (2) Almost all of the teachers were transferred from elementary schools in the same city, and (3) All of the school administrators were former elementary school administrators, etc. In addition, the length of service at the integrated schools differed greatly between teachers assigned in the first year of the integration and those transferred after the second year, especially for principals and teachers. Furthermore, few of the teachers who were transferred after the second year had experience working at the former elementary school. In other words, the stability of school life in the integrated school and the continuity of educational activities from the former elementary school were strongly manifested in the personnel changes in the first year after the schools were integrated. However, this was weakened after the second year.

This raises the following need for the research in educational administration. The relationship between the organization of the teaching staff in unit schools and personnel changes has not been demonstrated so far. However, the composition of the teaching staff in a unit school is an important variable in school management, and the personnel changes of teachers in each municipality regulate this composition. Research on teacher personnel from this perspective may be required in the future.

In this paper, we focus on the educational resource allocation system that considers differences in socio-economic backgrounds (Socioekonomisk resursfördelning) in Sweden and examine the system's elements to consider a Japanese alternative to the system.

We analyze the Swedish system from the following four viewpoints: 1) allocation based on differences in socioeconomic backgrounds, 2) the verification of the effect by linking input and outcomes, 3) the preparation and utilization of data, and 4) a clear allocation formula that guarantees transparency. Accordingly, an analysis was conducted on the materials issued by the Swedish Local Government Association (SKR: Sveriges Kommuner och Regioner) (formerly, SKL) and the data collected through an interview with a an SKL employee.

Results revealed that the Swedish system not only makes a strategic gradient allocation after assuming needs and risks but also verifies the allocation's result using relevant data and constantly upgrades itself based on the verification. In other words, the educational resource allocation system is implemented based on the evidence-based plan-do-check-act cycle to achieve social justice. These points should be considered when developing a resource allocation system in Japan. However, multiple barriers must be overcome both theoretically and institutionally to realize these points. In this paper, I reconsider these barriers from the four aforementioned viewpoints.

First, for viewpoint 1, the allocation system in Japan is strictly based on equal distribution and does not promote movements and philosophies that support gradual allocation. In addition, there is a strong tendency to view education from the perspective of self-responsibility (Nakazawa 2014) (Yano et al. 2016)．

Second, regarding point 2, the spread of evidence-based policymaking is being affected by neoliberal policy design in Japan. However, these efforts focus on ex-post (outcome) evaluations and are characterized by only a weak intention to provide input variations

Further, point 3 denotes the biggest obstacle to the implementation of a system in Japan similar to that of Sweden. In Japan, we do not have reliable high-quality data; furthermore, there are no intermediate organizations to analyze data, translate the analysis, and support policymaking. Therefore, it is difficult to formulate a clear allocation method that guarantees transparency, as required by viewpoint 4). Hence, it is necessary to create an intermediary organization function that acts as a mediator and translator of evidence similar to the Swedish Local Government Association to develop discussions based on facts and evidence supported by high-quality data.

Finally, we consider the cultural and social aspects that will particularly be required in the future. We should accept a trial-and-error method to design education policy, aim to develop an efficient system, and discuss various system alternatives that link social justice-related public policy norms (Sano 2010).