In 2016, the Japanese Government changed the voting system, and many young people (18 years and older) got the right to vote. The new voting system started at House of Councillors on July 10, 2016. However, most young people voted without knowledge of how to hold government accountable. Japanese high-school curricula have not taught that democratic governance regimes need ‘accountability’, and many students don’t understand the meanings of public accountability. They don’t know what accountability is, and don’t think policy evaluations can keep government effective. Therefore, Japanese citizenship education in school has been ‘politically neutral’, teachers have avoided an ideology debate and ‘political affairs’. Small projects (e.g. town revitalization), small problems (e.g. a bicycle parking lots), and trivial matters have become the subject of debate in class rooms. In this way, young people in Japan have become indifferent to election. For democratic citizenship education in Japan, we need participatory policy evaluation and empowerment evaluation in high school and university.

  This study compared frequency of equity-related keywords and those related to the 5 principles of ODA set by OECD-DAC that appeared in the evaluation documents of technical cooperation projects in basic education provided by JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency). With an interest to the extent of equity effect gained with international assistance, the study revealed that equity-related keywords appeared as frequently as those related to the 5 principles and therefore, equity is not overlooked in this regard. The frequency of equity-related keywords, however, decreased as projects proceed, and further, there are only 4.5% of the reviewed project (5/110) explicitly addresses equity in their design. As such, it concluded that current practices of project design and evaluation in general disregard ideas related to equity. While SDGs set learning and equity as the prioritized agenda, the study concluded that explicitly addressing equity in project design (e.g., recipient group, project purpose, outputs, activities, indicators, etc.) and evaluation is an urgent issue to maximize equity effect of individual project to pursue its contribution to SDGs achievement.