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Hello. I re-iterate all others and thank the Right to Education Project for holding this forum. As a citizen of Japan, I wanted to share with you some observations I am making about the debate currently taking place in Japan about making upper secondary schools (“high schools”) available free. In my humble opinion, this issue concerns discrimination against the poor regarding their right to education, and also the points raised on legislation.
In Japan, for 60-odd years, public schooling has been available free for 9 years by law, but that never progressed further. In other words, the state obligation of “progressive realization” did not take place. With the recent change in the party in power, which promised during the election campaign to make three more years of public education available free, this question has been put on the table. However, with the tight public budget under the global economic crisis, there has been much debate.
Thanks to the question placed on the public debate, there has been a lot of reporting on the mainstream media about how the poor have been discriminated against in accessing upper secondary education because of the cost involved (it costs 520,000yen, or approximately US$5900, a year on average for a student to attend a public high school). Many students choose to drop out not because they do not want to learn but because they are not able to pay. At the same time, there have also been many opinions expressed by the mainstream media that oppose making three more years available free, on the ground that, eg. it is not compulsory (but that is the other way around from the perspective of international human rights treaties: it is not supposed to be compulsory if it is not free), or it should be made free only for those from poor families (again from the perspective of international human rights treaties, this is not a question of one or the other: it should be made available free universally, and in addition, there should be positive measures such as scholarships to support the poor and others who are excluded and disadvantaged).
What surprises me most is that there is no opinion to legislate making public education available free for 12 years. Debates are all reduced to the question of budget, i.e. whether it will be possible to make three more years of public schooling available free in the next fiscal year, despite it is Japan, one of the richest countries in the world. This implies that when the party in power changes, or if the economy goes worse, the situation can go back to the same old. This implies that, even if three more years of schooling are made available free in the next fiscal year thanks to the political momentum, there is no guarantee of the right to secondary education of citizens of the country.
For me, the moral of the story is two-fold: (a) legislation is critical to guaranteeing the right to education, especially at a time of instability such as the one we are in at the moment; (b) it is important to raise the awareness of journalists and media workers about their own and their family’s right to education.
II wanted to share with you this story just to say that the fulfillment of the Right to Education for All is no simple mater even in a country that is considered “advanced.” Discrimination goes far, wide and deep, and we have a lot to do.
Thank you again for this opportunity.