Junior High School
Lower-secondary schools cover grades seven, eight, and nine. Ages are roughly thirteen to fifteen with increased focus on academic studies. Although it is still possible to leave the formal education system after completing lower secondary school and find employment, fewer than 4% did so by the late 1980s.
Like most elementary schools, most junior high schools in the 1980s were public schools and government funded, but 5% were private schools. Private schools cost about 558,592 (Yen) (US$3,989) per student in 1988, about four times more than the 130,828 yen (US$934) that the ministry estimated as the cost for students enrolled in public junior high schools.
The minimum number of school days in a year is 210 in Japan, compared to 180 in the United States. However, students will typically attend school for 240 to 250 days a year. A significant part of the school calendar is taken up by non-academic events such as sports days and school trips.
The teaching force in lower-secondary schools is two-thirds male. Schools are headed by principals, 99% of whom were men in 1988. Teachers often majored in the subjects they taught, and more than 80% graduated from a four-year college. Classes are large, with thirty-eight students per class on average, and each class is assigned a homeroom teacher who doubles as counselor. Unlike Elementary students, junior high school students have different teachers for different subjects. The teacher, however, rather than the students, moves to a new room for each fifty-minute period.
Read more about this topic: Secondary Education In Japan
Famous quotes containing the words junior, high and/or school:
“Never burn bridges. Today’s junior prick, tomorrow’s senior partner.”
—Kevin Wade, U.S. screenwriter, and Mike Nichols. Katharine Parker (Sigourney Weaver)
“But hospitality must be for service, and not for show, or it pulls down the host. The brave soul rates itself too high to value itself by the splendor of its table and draperies. It gives what it hath, and all it hath, but its own majesty can lend a better grace to bannocks and fair water than belong to city feasts.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“[How] the young . . . can grow from the primitive to the civilized, from emotional anarchy to the disciplined freedom of maturity without losing the joy of spontaneity and the peace of self-honesty is a problem of education that no school and no culture have ever solved.”
—Leontine Young (20th century)