The English-language ability of students at public secondary schools fell short of the government's target in the 2018 academic year through March, despite a slight improvement from a year earlier, a government survey showed Tuesday.
The percentage of third-year students at junior high schools whose English skills were equivalent to Grade 3 of the widely-used Eiken proficiency test rose 1.9 points from a year ago to 42.6 percent. For third-year senior high school students with skills matching Grade Pre-2, the increase was 0.9 point to 40.2 percent.
Conducted by the education ministry in December, the survey showed that final-year students of both junior and senior high schools did not reach the 50 percent goal set for them by the government.