Since the Central Education Council of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology made a suggestion, in its report on local educational administration in 1998, that schools should carry outa selfevaluation annually and make public its results so as to make them more open and accountable to their respective communities, public schools all over Japan have been establishing a school evaluation system. Today selfevaluation by teachers is practiced by more than 95% of public primary and lower secondary schools in Japan. However, the knowledge base of those dealing with evaluation tasks in schools is quite limited. The literature on school evaluation is on the increase in recent years, but much of it is no more than tracing of the practice and attempts at theoretical sorting of the practices are rarely made. In the present paper, the theory of school evaluation is depicted as consisting of a two-layered structure with a theory of school evaluation mechanism (school evaluation system) and a theory of school evaluation practice (evaluation methods). A framework is presented for analysing them with a focus on practice. The concluding section of the paper sorts out the issues in movingfrom the mechanism to practice.

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It is important that information that the principal gives and information that other teachers give relate, and they act as an organization, To attempt management improvement of the school by fostering the accountability.
There are two important things for accomplishing accountability.
One is to explain the situation of the progress management.
Another, when outside people request execution to the school, it is important that we finish explaining showing them grounds that cannot be done in case of difficulty.
Accomplishing accountability becomes one of the means for the school to attempt reexamination of its own management.
Moreover, for people and guardians in the region, it becomes one of the measures that they understand school management by sharing information and problems among them and the school personnel.

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From academic years 2000 to 2003, the National Institution for Academic Degrees and University Evaluation (NIAD-UE) implemented evaluations of selected universities on a trial basis. Evaluation can be regarded as an intervention and subsequently the target of a program evaluation. After the NIAD-UE trial evaluation was compleated, a meta-evaluation was conducted to clarify its outputs and outcomes, including successful aspects and problems, through questionnaire surveys and interviews with the evaluators and the evaluated. As a result, it was made clear that the process and the result of the evaluation had led to the improvement of universities' educational and research activities. However, many of the persons engaged in the evaluation pointed out their considerable burden. Apathy of both other university staff and the public about the evaluation also remained a problem for making an effective evaluation system. Moreover, the concept of cost effectiveness should be introduced to the new settings of university evaluations, because the evaluation cost was worse especially for research assessment.

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The article attempted a theoretical comparative analysis on educational evaluation methodologies to examine the ways in which educational evaluation can lead to effective education policies and planning in developing countries. Three major surveys, namely, international student assessment, school survey, and household survey were compared and contrasted and the missing links were identified. It was found that the existing international student assessments have defects in its target groups and data collection method, while school survey and household survey also overlook a comprehensive focus on both supply and demand sides of education. The results of these surveys occasionally confront discrepancies, especially in developing countries where a number of out-ofschool children and dropouts exist. Thus, a comprehensive assessment of these surveys is essential. Furthermore, qualitative research would be required for a complementary analysis for inferences from the quantitative data, particularly for critical issues such as non-enrollment and dropout.

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Various activities with community participation to improve the primary education, such as school construction, have been conducted in the developing countries, which have limited resources for education development. Administrative and technical supports by local governments are essential to make these community efforts effective, including deployment of teachers and delivery of textbooks; however, there are many cases reported that local governments do not provide proper supports. Some of the technical cooperation projects in the education sector, which are implemented through the official development assistance (ODA) of Japan, include (or included) a component to develop local governments and officers' capacity in supporting community participation. These projects are expected to lead to the good governance through community empowerment Currently, these projects are evaluated from the viewpoints of education development; it might be important to evaluate how they contribute to the enhancement of participatory development at the community and at the government levels.

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Recently, the impact of non-formal education on poverty reduction has been increasingly recognized among international aid communities. However, the difficulty of evaluating non-formal education due to the elastic dimensions of implementation process has become challenging issue. This article discusses applicability of ‘Participatory Evaluation’ in non-formal settings through case analysis, assuming it would effectively function in the evaluation process. Various influences on projects could be observed through stakeholder involvement in Participatory Evaluation practice. The following points are concluded as expected effects of its utilization: 1) identification of quality indicators of attitude and behavioral changes through ‘dialogue’ among stakeholders, 2) appropriate and practical recommendation that lead to more utilization, due to the formative aspect of Participatory Evaluation, and 3) the contribution to strengthening evaluation capacity as well as organizational learning. More practice and cases of Participatory Evaluation should be accumulated and analyzed for further examination and improvement of its methodology.

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Program-based approaches (PBAs) are increasingly being applied to development assistance in the primary education sector. To examine their current operations and challenges, the author conducted a case study of the Education for All-Fast Track Initiative (EFA-FTI) in Honduras and Vietnam carried out under PBAs, focusing on progress towards development results. The study shows that, despite similar approaches and tools employed under the EFA-FTI, the program and progress between the countries differ due to factors such as aid-dependency, capacity, and an enabling environment. This paper argues that differentiated approaches based upon specific country contexts are essential. The importance of capacity development of partner countries is also emphasized. The author raises the issue of evaluating aid under PBAs; she proposes that evaluation be based upon the concept of contribution and points out the importance of assessing strategic positioning and the role of aid, given overall efforts towards the attainment of development results.

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Recently, “student ratings” of courses are becoming popular among Japanese colleges and universities in getting more information for Faculty Development (FD). The purpose of this paper is to propose a new threedimensional analysis incorporating the weight of factors in student evaluations of university courses.
It is useful for the policy of FD to consider the importance of factors. If we know which factors are the most important for students, we can improve our course performance more effectively.
Conjoint analysis was used to determine the important criteria. We translate not only the results of conjoint analysis (“utility” and“averaged importance”) but “students ratings” data in a three-dimensional bubble graph. This graph makes it possible to show faculties the priority of factors that must be improved in their courses. Four divisions of the graph, named “continue-factors”, “reexamine-factors”, “improve-factors” and “reduce factors” represent the features of the variables that are located in each division.

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The objective of the research is to provide an analytical model of the economic Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) and resultant policy recommendations, with the proposed emergency medical service (EMS) project in Constanta County (714, 923 population, 2005), Romania, in view. The economic cost of investment is US 31.5 million as per 2006 price level. The economic benefits are due to (i) incremental benefits attributable to EMS at the Constanta Emergency Hospital (CEH) as measured by willingness to pay (WTP) for healthier life, and (ii) social cost-saved (recovery of Productivity foregone due to emergent injury and diseases) measured by disability-adjusted life years (DALY). WTP was estimated by Contingent Valuation Method (CVM)-Double-bounded Dichotomous Choice method (449 interviewees) resulting in US 1.6 million par annum (US 214.8 per household, 8.9 percent of average household disposable income in Constanta). DALY in Constanta in 2005 is estimated at 118, 885 person-years while applying the “ratio method” of total DALY to death DALY (7, 286 deceased) and the disability adjustment factors (weighed average 0.67). With his and the productive beneficiaries (age group 15-59) of EMS at CEH (5, 812 DALY) and the annual household disposable income in Constanta average (US2, 420.7), financial-benefits-converted to the social cost-saved is US 12.7 million (SCF=0.9), totaling to US 14.3 million of economic benefit per year. The economic internal rate of return (EIRR) is 32.2 percent, thereby quantitatively revealing high economic viability (efficiency in scarce resource allocation) of the concerned EMS project in Constanta.

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This study examines the causality of the development process of social capacity for environmental management (SCEM), which contributes to urban air quality improvement realized by social actors (i. e., government, firms, and citizens) and factors (i. e., policy & measure, resource management, andknowledge&technology). By applying the stepwise chow test and correlation analysis to a panel data set for years between 1971 and 2000, we show the substitutability of actors' capacity in the case of 3 major cities (i. e., Yokohama, Nagoya, Osaka) in Japan as the development process of SCEM. Then, a structural equation model is applied to examine the causality of the development process of SCEM for the period before the substitutability of actors' capacity. The model shows that increasing government capacity has increased firms' and citizens' capacity.

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In 2001, the Japanese government tried to introduce a ‘safety-net’ for the unemployed, especially the Special Emergency Grants for Job Creation. But there have been doubts whether these grants projects were effective or not. So, the press and the Diet queried to the projects, but the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, which had responsibility for the projects, insisted the project performanced well.
The function of meta-evaluation was adopted in the evaluation system of the Japanese government, and the Administrative Evaluation Bureau plays the main role objectivity of evaluation. In the Special Emergency Grants for Job Creation, objectivity of evaluation system became a problem and resulted in disputes.

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One of the major environmental problems facing India today is air pollution. The Indian government has already taken a number of measures to control air pollution. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of policy instruments on controlling air pollution in industrial areas in India from 1991 to 2002 with particular reference to trends in the concentration of SO₂, NO₂ and SPM. The results indicate that the concentration of SO₂ at all monitoring stations in 2002 met India's National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) as a result of measures such as the diesel-sulfur phase-out program. Also, with regard to the concentration of NO₂, the fraction of stations reporting levels above the NAAQS has gradually declined since 1997, and the national annual average of NO₂ has been within the NAAQS at the majority of monitoring stations. SPM concentrations, however, have shown no such decline. One reason for this may be that the coal produced in India has a high ash content. This paper implies that because the SPM emission levels depend on the ash content of coal, stricter measures for controlling SPM will be needed.

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The purpose of this study is proposing four evaluation methods and demonstrating to what degree they are adopted in self-evaluations of undergraduate education in Japan. In the first part, four evaluation approaches are introduced in relation to the ideas of undergraduate education. They are named as Autonomy-Based Approach, Demand-Based Approach, Standard-Based Approach, and Outcomes-Based Approach. In the latter part of this article, the data from a national survey of 1, 871 faculty members in Japanese universities show that to what extent those four methods are used in practice. As a result of the analysis, it is found that the degree of adoption depends on the evaluation focuses and traits of the faculty. This fact is discussed in consideration of diversifying idea of undergraduate education.

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