Miyagi high schools embracing coed culture after 12 years in transition

Ever since high schools run by Miyagi Prefecture went coed in 2010, educators have sought ways to realize the school board’s goal of creating “a place where boys and girls can learn together.”

After 12 years, students have adapted to the changes, while some alumni still question whether the objective has been achieved.

Only one-third are boys

Miyagi First High School in Sendai became coed in 2008, but for Kaito Kimura, 17, a second-year student as of March, only about one-third of his class are boys.

He was attracted by the school’s less restrictive culture, where there is no required uniform and students are allowed to dye their hair. He knew that female students outnumbered their male peers at the former all-girls school, but wasn’t bothered by it after being assured by an upperclassman that it wouldn't affect school life.

Since enrolling, there have been very few occasions when he felt he was attending a former girls’ school. Still, the annual music contest in July was a little different.

The contest, in which classes compete against each other through creative singing and dancing, has been an iconic school event with roots in the years when all students were female. The costumes and sets for the stage are all handmade. Kimura had vaguely thought the girls would take the initiative in preparing for the event.

Barriers fall

The event wasn’t held during his first year at the school because of the coronavirus pandemic. During his second year, event preparations began in June. He had never spoken to some of the girls, but as they made props for the performances, conversations began to flow and a sense of unity grew stronger.

Before the performance, the class formed a circle together to mentally prepare for the show, which featured a plot from the Boston Tea Party incident from U.S. history. When the show ended and the curtain fell, Kimura, who was in charge of lighting for the stage, was filled with a sense of accomplishment.

Filled with joy and pride, any mental barriers between male and female students were gone. “The guys and the girls did the best we could, all working together to make the stage the best it could be,” he said.

Female students at a former all-boys schools also appear to have adjusted as well. “Aside from things like the newly made restrooms for girls I don’t really feel like the school was all-boys before,” said a female student at Sendai Daini High School.

A female student at Sendai Daiichi High School said some girls have taken leadership roles at the school, citing a symbolic example of some of her female classmates in key positions in the traditionally all-male cheerleading squad.

In 2001, the prefectural board of education announced a policy to make all prefectural-run high schools coeducational, saying, “it is undesirable to restrict admission to prefectural high schools based on gender.”

The transition to the coed school system began in 2005 and was completed in 2010, starting off with eight schools outside Sendai, as opposition to the idea was strong among traditional schools in Sendai.

In the end, a total of 21 high schools run by the prefecture — including all-boy, all-girl and coed schools — were reorganized into 16 coed institutions. Some of the schools were merged or turned into integrated junior and senior high schools.

Private school

The coed wave also spread to a private school. Tohoku Gakuin Junior and Senior High School, which had remained as the only boys’ school in the prefecture, became coed in April of its 135th year after it was founded.

“In this age of globalization, students need to be able to understand people of different races, languages, and gender, and to be able to respond to diversity,” Principal Tsuneyuki Abe, 63, said during a briefing on the school’s entrance exam for third-year junior high school students last November.

Of the 193 groups of students and parents who attended the briefing, about 40% were girls. A female junior high school student from Sendai expressed a favorable impression of the school, saying, “I like the fact that it incorporates a gender perspective from junior high and high school.”

When deciding to turn the school coed, Abe said he was prepared for fierce opposition from alumni. “But in fact, there was almost none,” he recalled. There were many who accepted the change as a “trend of the times” and others who were in businesses that promote the advancement of women.

“Some were pleased, saying, ‘now we can let our daughters and granddaughters in.’ I was grateful for their school spirit,” Abe said.

“Nothing we can do”

The changes, however, did not come easy at prefectural-run schools, especially among traditional all-boys schools in Sendai with long histories and high academic standards.

In July 2004, Junichi Nishizawa, then head of the alumni association of Sendai Daini High School, visited then Miyagi Gov. Shiro Asano at the prefectural government office to demand a freeze on the transition plan.

“It has already been decided,” Asano told Nishizawa at the beginning of their conversation. “Even if the chairman is here, there is nothing we can do about it,” Asano said.

Asano himself is a graduate of the school. Masamichi Takahashi, 89, who attended the meeting as vice chair of the alumni association, recalled, “I thought (he would consider it) for the sake of alumni, but nothing went forward with the governor.”

Uneven gender ratio

Even after more than 10 years, the gender ratio at transformed schools remains uneven. While the ratio of female students at former boys’ schools have risen gradually, with girls at Sendai Daiichi topping 50% for the first time in the 2021 academic year, the ratio of male students at former girls’ schools remains low.

Tomoko Ito, 70, an alumnus of Miyagi Daisan Girls High School who opposed the move to coed, wonders if the education board’s goal of creating “a place where boys and girls can learn, understand, and grow together” has been achieved. Female students at the school, which is now coed and renamed Sendai Sanou High School, accounted for as high as 83.5% in the 2021 academic year.

“How does the education board now view the imbalance at former all-girls schools with few boys?” Ito asks.

In the 2014 academic year, four years after the complete switch to the coed system, the education board compiled a report based on the on-sight reviews of schools that were coed from the beginning and schools that have transformed to coed.

The report explained that the sluggish growth in male enrollment at former all-girls schools “can be understood as a characteristic of the school.” The report emphasized that the gender ratio does not need to be equal in all schools.

The report summarized that there has been no significant change in the truancy rate or dropout rate, and that no major problems have been seen with the students’ plans for higher education or careers.

“In general, education is going well” after the change to the coed system, the report concluded.

Another review

Miyagi Gov. Yoshihiro Murai, in his 17th year as governor, says things have settled down considerably after 12 years.

“Opinions for turning back the clock have stopped coming to me,” he said. “I don't feel that today’s children have any reservations about this issue.”

Murai had questioned the adoption of the coed system at all schools when he was first elected to office, but he now views the current situation positively.

Nevertheless, there are still persistent calls for another full-fledged review, particularly from alumni associations. An alumnus of Sendai Daiichi questioned whether the school is really nurturing a diverse student body, while an alumnus of Sendai Daini wondered whether the educational goals set when it was a boys’ school should remain unchanged.

While small distortions in the system may be overlooked if voices of alumni were ignored, one school principal pointed out the difficulty of statistically assessing the reform.

Even if the prefecture were to conduct a survey of some kind, “respondents would only say a school is 'good' if they like it whether it's coed or not,” the principal said.

Akiyo Ito, head of the education board, responded in writing to calls for another review, saying that the board has no plans to reexamine the issue. “It has done no major harm or caused any big problems.”

This section features topics and issues from the Tohoku region covered by the Kahoku Shimpo, the largest newspaper in Tohoku. The original article was published April 4.