While various kinds of private free schools are sprouting up in Japan to provide alternative education, a group of teachers and parents in Fujisawa, Kanagawa Prefecture, are trying to set up a public free school -- a Japanese version of chartered schools in the United States.
Chartered schools, first established in Minnesota in 1992, are operated with taxpayer money by local citizens or by private corporations, based on a contract with a local government.
These schools, now numbering some 1,700 in the U.S., have great freedom in setting up their own curricula but are required to achieve their educational objectives within a chartered period of about five years, or face closure.