Akita Kids Do Best At School

[Mulboyne]

Asahi: Up north, bright kids
...Sixth-graders in Akita Prefecture have surprised a lot of people by scoring the overall highest marks in a nationwide test on scholastic levels for almost all pupils in that group...Since the results were released in October, some have referred to the prefecture as "Japan's Finland" in reference to Finland's recent top ranking in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's Program for International Student Assessment for 2006...It has teachers and education officials in other parts of the country wondering how schools in the prefecture do things differently...What the schools do as a matter of course is to ensure that class numbers are kept low...At Chikuzan Elementary School here, classes are taught by teams of two teachers--one to lead the lesson and the other to help individual pupils when they cannot keep up...This practice has been in place for 44 years, nearly 30 years ahead of schools in other prefectures...Another feature for which Akita Prefecture is noted is the high competition in hiring exams for elementary school teachers...In addition to the tough competition to become a teacher, there are systems in place to ensure that novice teachers are properly trained...In 2006, eight experts were also appointed by the board to give guidance to teachers on conducting classes...[Said] Motoko Kudo "Veteran teachers sometimes get fixed in their teaching styles and are unable to deal with changing circumstances in children...I hope to help teachers by joining their lessons"... Sakiko Kaneda, another teacher, also noted that few children in the school skip breakfast, a problem thought to cause inattention, among other things, in schoolchildren. "There are few places to hang, so all family members lead regular lifestyles," she added...more...

[canman]

I have to give Akita a lot of credit. It is one prefecture that is really trying to better itself, without the help of large public works projects or gov't money. After they lost the shinkansen race, they decided to build their own new airport, privately of course, and it has been doing very well. The prefecture also felt the need for another university, and since they already had the buildings and even some of the teachers from the failed University of Minnesota campus, they looked at many universities to copy and followed the example of ICU. Now Akita International University has quickly grown to be own of the better schools in the Tohoku region with the number of applicants 10 times the current student body. So hats off to Akita.

[Doctor Stop]

Meanwhile, in Adachi-ku:

At least six teachers at a public elementary school in Adachi Ward, Tokyo, have said they were told by their principal to alert students to mistakes when taking achievement tests in April 2006.

The school's average score shot to No. 1 that year among the ward's 72 schools, up from 44th the year before.

Adachi Ward publishes test score rankings by school, determines school budgets by taking test scores into account and allows parents to select the school they want to send their children to.

The teachers said they pointed to incorrect answers as they walked among the students while they were taking the test.

"By pointing them out with a finger, some pupils got what I meant, while others didn't," one teacher said. "I thought it bordered on fraud. If you ask me if there was an instruction from the school principal, my answer is yes."

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20070708a8.html