Examination Hell in Japan

"Examination hell" is an expression which reflects the extreme pressures on Japanese students and their families. The pressures center around entrance exams that students have to take. Passing the exams requires an enormous amount of study, usually year-round. A student's entire future could depend on doing well on the entrance exams.

There are entrance exams at every level of education these days, even beginning with kindergarten. If you get into a good kindergarten, good elementary school, and that's important.

If you go to a good elementary school, you have a better chance of getting into a good junior high school and then a good high school. Then if you can get into a good university, you have a better chance of getting a good job.

Education in Japan..

Japanese have had compulsory education in Japan for more than a hundred years. All Japanese children are required to go to school for nine years, beginning at age six. There are six years of elementary school, three years of junior high school, and three years of senior high school. Almost ninety-six percent of all those completing junior high go on to high school.

There are about six hundred junior colleges and over five-hundred universities in Japan. About thirty-eight percent of those graduating from high schools go on to junior colleges or universities.

About half of the universities have graduate schools, so there are about two hundred fifty, but the number is increasing. They offer both master's degrees and doctorates. There are approximately a hundred forty thousand graduate students in Japan.

Japanese Parents..

By western standards, Japanese parents are very indulgent with their children when they are very young. Westerners in Japan are surprised at how undisciplined Japanese children seem to be. And it's true. But everything changes when the child reaches the age of five or six. Then the permissiveness ends very abruptly.

The reason for the change is because it's the beginning of the child's formal education. That officially starts with entrance into elementary school at age six. But these days it begins even earlier with kindergarten at four or five.

The change is so abrupt because the Japanese system of education is very demanding. Once children enter the system they have to work extremely hard. So parents tend to be overly permissive while they can during the early years. After that they have no choice but to be strict.