The education ministry wants to start teaching English to third-graders on a trial basis at several hundred elementary schools nationwide in fiscal 2009, a ministry official said this week.
"We want to ask (the Finance Ministry) for a budget to have model schools collect data to (determine) whether it is appropriate to start (English education) from the third grade," said Hiroshi Kamiyama, an official at the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry.
While the decision to make the study of foreign languages — basically English — compulsory for fifth-graders starting in fiscal 2011 remains unchanged, the ministry is also considering letting some schools offer English studies for younger pupils on a trial basis, the official emphasized.