August 23, 2011

The local party “Osaka Ishin-no Kai (Osaka Restoration Group)” headed by Osaka Governor Hashimoto Toru on August 22 published two bills which enable him or city mayors to remove “undesirable” teachers from public schools.

The bills also drastically increase the authority of local government chiefs to unilaterally set goals for municipally run schools.

The Japanese Communist Party Osaka Prefectural Assembly Members’ Group on the same day criticized the governor’s attempt to foster public teachers who just obey the dictates of a municipal mayor or a school principal rather than to meet the wishes of parents, children, and communities.

The “Osaka Ishin-no Kai” will submit the bills, which would increase the authority of local government heads and school headmasters, to the prefectural assembly in September.

The “fundamental ordinance on education” and the “fundamental ordinance on teachers” would accept local government executives, public school directors and vice-directors from the general public; empower a school director to make decisions on personnel issues and on which textbooks her/his school uses, abolish or merge public high schools which fall short of meeting their enrollment quotas, dismiss teachers who disobey official orders five times, evaluate teachers’ ability on a 5-point scale, and discharge the lowest ranking teachers.

The JCP Osaka Prefectural Assembly group is demanding that the Osaka governor not submit the bills to the assembly, arguing that he should instead increase the number of full-time teachers, increase small-sized classes, and improve teaching and learning environments for teaching staff and children.