The Democratic Party of Japan will drastically scale back the national achievement examination, currently taken by almost all students in the sixth grade of elementary school and third year of junior high, if it emerges as the ruling party in the election, sources said Monday.
The DPJ would select a limited number of schools to hold the exam starting with the 2011 academic year, the sources said.
The party has argued that its sampling method would be sufficient to assess academic abilities and that it would save ¥4 billion.
Students from more grades would take the test, and more subjects would be covered, the sources said. The current test deals with Japanese and math.
The education ministry resumed the exam in 2007 after 43 years out of concern that academic abilities were declining. All public schools and half of private schools participated in it this year.