National and Local Educational Administration

Abstract

Since the 2000s, Japan’s educational administration has experienced more changes than ever before. The Japanese administration itself has been in the process of strengthening the powers of its cabinet functions. With these changes, “the core executives”—the Prime Minister at the national level and governors and mayors at the local level—have gained much more power over educational policies, while the so-called educational policy community, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) and educators, has been losing its influence in recent years. As a result of these changes, the core executives have come to heavily influence the educational policies at the national level, compared to those up until the 1990s. At the local level, as the governal or mayoral educational reforms progressed, the Local Educational Administration Act was reformed in 2014 to decrease the authority of the Boards of Education and strengthen the authority of the Chief Executives (governors and mayors).