Disparities between local governments seen in national “educational power” rankings | Special | Toyo Keizai Online

What is the level of “educational capacity” in each municipality? We measured the degree of fulfillment of the faculty system.

Read other articles in the special feature “School collapses”

The number of teachers in public schools depends on the policies and financial strength of each municipality. We ranked the degree of adequacy of the faculty system using two indicators.

First of all, “sufficiency rate”. It indicates how many teachers meet the number of elementary schools set as the national standard. According to the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology’s “Fact-Finding Survey on the Teacher Shortage,” the national average sufficiency rate was 101.8% (as of May 2021).

Local governments with over 100% sufficiency rates are using their own policies to increase the number of teachers. Tottori Prefecture, which ranked first, is working on its own initiative to introduce 30-student classes for all grades of elementary school, and is working to reduce the number of students in each class. As a result, the number of pupils per teacher shown together with the sufficiency rate is 11.6, well below the national average.

Number of teachers increased due to smaller classes