Japan makes high school free – again
- World Half Full
- May 1
- 1 min read
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In late March, Japan’s parliament, the Diet, voted to make public high school free for all children — again. Tuition fees had been abolished in 2010, but then reinstated in 2013.
The new measure will expand equal opportunity in education, and is expected to boost education access and certainty for children of parents with unstable incomes or from immigrant and other marginalised backgrounds who sometimes struggle with the bureaucracy of tuition subsidies.
The initiative was pushed by the small opposition Japan Innovation Party, whose votes the minority government needed to pass the budget.
Currently, Japan subsidises public high school tuition up to US$800 annually for students from households earning less than US$60,000. The new measure removes the income threshold, aiming to offer free public high school education to all.
Until now, Japan had been the wealthiest country in the world — in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita — without guaranteed free public secondary education for all. It had also been spending among the lowest GDP percentage on education among OECD countries.
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