The education ministry is thinking of letting municipal boards of education make public individual schools' results of nationwide achievements tests for sixth and ninth graders. Currently only individual schools are allowed to make public their test results if they choose to, and the ministry only makes public the average test results at prefectural levels.
We believe that such a policy change would lead to excessive competition among schools as well as students, and lead to the ranking of schools in terms of the test results, thus skewing the overall purpose of education.
When the ministry introduced the achievement tests in 2007, it declared that their purpose is to find out what is wrong with teaching and to help teachers improve their teaching of individual students. It is hard to understand how making public the test results of individual schools would contribute to fulfilling the ministry's goal. The ministry should rethink its planned policy change.