The education ministry's new policy of letting municipal boards of education publicly release the results of nationwide achievements tests for individual public schools risks distorting Japan's approach to education. The policy could lead educators and parents to become overly concerned with raising test scores at the expense of other important areas of education such as nurturing strong bodies and healthy minds, love of nature, independent thinking and creativity, and strong communication and cooperation skills.
Nationwide achievement tests were carried out in 2007 for the first time in 47 years. For the 2013 tests, only individual schools were allowed to make public their test results if they chose to and the education ministry only released average test results at prefectural levels.
But responding to requests from some local government heads who want disclosure of test results, education minister Hakubun Shimomura has decided to conditionally allow municipal boards of education to make public average test scores of individual schools.