The education system is not taking adequate care of the increasing number of foreign children living in Japan. According to a recent Kyodo News survey, 41 out of 72 municipal governments have failed to confirm the whereabouts of more than 10,000 non-Japanese children not attending school. That lack of oversight does not happen with Japanese children, whose truancy is typically tracked and investigated by boards of education.

The number of students potentially left out of the system is roughly 10 percent of the 100,000 school-age children of foreign nationality in Japan. These kids are not receiving an education, or even any attention, during their most important years. Such negligence violates the Convention of the Rights of the Child, a United Nations treaty that went into force in 1990 and stipulates that all children have the right to attend school.

The central government and education ministry is handling non-Japanese children differently from Japanese children. The survey found that many municipalities, including the cities of Chiba, Yokohama, Osaka and some of Tokyo's 23 wards, had many children of foreign nationality whose school attendance was not being tracked. Many others only superficially follow the attendance of non-Japanese students by sending questionnaires to families without any follow-up.