Japan to Pilot Digital High School Admissions in 2025
The Japanese government plans to launch a pilot project in fiscal 2025 aimed at fully digitalizing high school admissions. This initiative seeks to alleviate the burdens on students, parents, and teachers while minimizing human errors, such as forgetting to submit applications.
Presently, students often fill out application forms by hand and pay examination fees at financial institutions. Junior high schools either deliver student reports directly to high schools or send them by mail. High schools then manually input the documents received into their systems and check for errors in handwritten documents.
To streamline this process, the government plans to allow related documents to be sent in digital form and examination fees to be paid through cashless payment services. The pilot digitalization project will cover the submission of application documents, the release of examination results, and the completion of entrance procedures.
The government intends to conduct the project with education boards and public schools willing to cooperate. Technical challenges such as data integration between junior high and high schools will be addressed during fiscal 2024. Following the pilot project, the government hopes to spread digital admission procedures nationwide after confirming their effectiveness.
Digital procedures are seen as possible through the use of online file-sharing services without introducing new systems in schools. The Digital Agency estimates that digital procedures will reduce administrative work by approximately 30 to 90 hours at junior high schools and by 20 to 80 hours at high schools.
This pilot project represents a significant step towards modernizing Japan's education system, potentially setting a precedent for other countries to follow in simplifying and improving their school admissions processes.
