Japan has passed a bill on Wednesday allowing amenable working hours for public school teachers after their inclination to overwork teachers drew public condemnation.
Japan is famous for its long working hours of employees and teachers are not exempted from the list. The average working hours of junior high school teachers in the country stands at 56 hours per week in 2018, the longest among nations and regions surveyed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
The newly amended law on special measures on teachers’ salaries will give local governments the option to increase teacher’s work longer hours at busy times of the academic year and take more days off in the summer when students go on vacation.
Under the Education Ministry’s scenario, districts introducing the flexible system will increase their teachers’ work hours by three hours a week in April, typically a busy period at the start of the new academic year, and add five more days off to August.
The system is reportedly expected to be introduced at some districts from April 2021.
Education Minister analysis
During deliberations at parliament, Education Minister Koichi Hagiuda said the system does not reduce the workload itself, but would make teaching jobs more attractive to those aspiring to become teachers.
Opposition parties were against the move, saying it would make teachers even busier in the peak workload season and could trigger deaths from overwork.
They called for hiring more teachers instead, claiming school staff often cannot take a long summer break as they need to participate in training or manage students in extracurricular activities.
The new law is accompanied by a resolution that calls for local education boards to thoroughly check whether the schools introducing the system are working toward reducing overall workload as well as to create a center to accept complaints from teachers at schools that make them do overtime beyond the cap.
Japan drops in OECD reading skills ranking
According to the OECD, Japanese students ranked at their lowest level ever for reading skills while remaining in the top band for science and mathematics.
Japanese students dropped to 15th in reading from eighth in the previous tests. They also ranked lower for science, in fifth place, down from second and mathematics at sixth, down from fifth.
The Education Ministry believes students can still improve in their ability to find information from texts, as well as better, evaluate the credibility of texts and more clearly explain their thoughts and reasoning to others.
He also pointed out that Japanese students are not used to reading long passages on computer screens.
