Maiko Sumino
July, 2015
Abstract
Historically, the Japanese government has been reluctant toward stabilizing educational measures for the foreign-born population. A substantial number of foreign-born students drop out of school, and/or do not continue on to education beyond junior high school. This paper focuses on the Night Junior High Schools (hereafter: NJHS), which are known as institutions that accommodate one-third of the migrant students within the total student numbers in these type of schools (Asano, 2012). As the NJHS are labeled as institutions that accept students who are beyond the compulsory school age, these schools have served as safety nets for the migrant population, who might have been at risk of not attending any form of educational institution.
The purpose of this paper is to examine the historical role of the NJHS and how they are publically discussed as institutions in Japanese society. This research shows that there is growing attention toward NJHSs in the political discussion after 2013, and this may have a profound impact on Japanese society, although there still remain many challenges.
