Hideo Akabayashi: Post-COVID Educational Inequality and the Role of the Children and Families Agency

2023/04/17

There are concerns about the long-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the next generation.

In Japan, schools were closed for a certain period starting in March 2020, forcing education to rely on the home. Children's daily lives changed significantly, and the weight of online learning in out-of-school education also increased.

However, pre-pandemic research showed that for children with low interest in learning or those from socioeconomically disadvantaged families without proper information environments, academic performance is relatively harder to improve through online classes compared to in-person classroom instruction. If this is the case, the shift to online learning may encourage the solidification of academic disparities based on family background and upbringing.

Our research group used data collected by the Cabinet Office in 2020 to analyze which types of households desired and actually used online education for their children (Akabayashi et al. 2023). The results showed that in areas where the number of COVID-positive patients increased rapidly, children in private schools and children of highly educated parents showed an increased tendency to experience online learning in out-of-school education. Furthermore, while higher-income families and more highly educated parents were more likely to request the digitalization of school education, we also confirmed that in cases where the mother was a regular employee and the father was a non-regular employee, they did not request a sudden shift to online school education. It is easy to imagine that in such households, supporting a child's home learning is difficult.

However, it is not yet known to what extent school closures and the use of online education in Japan have affected children's development as a whole.

To begin with, the digitalization of learning is not all bad. Even in regions with few resources for out-of-school learning, such as Juku or extracurricular lessons, access is possible if it is online. Additionally, with the spread of YouTube, it has become possible to be exposed to a vast amount of native English in any rural area.

It was only recently that information terminals were distributed to children in schools, and the use of online tools in the field is actually still in a trial-and-error phase. Simply moving textbooks and classroom lessons online results in nothing more than a degraded copy of classroom learning. It is not that online is bad, but rather that the way of teaching that leverages its strengths remains unexplored.

How to maximize the advantages of online education without widening the educational gap can be called the greatest challenge of post-COVID education policy. With this awareness, we are tackling the issues that post-pandemic society must overcome through the Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research project adopted in FY2021, "Research on Educational Inequality Post-COVID: Elucidating Global Issues and Innovating Online Survey and Experimental Methods."

Policies for households with children have been used as campaign promises in the past during every change of government or election. In particular, due to the changes in government between 2009 and 2012, the amount and eligibility criteria for child allowances were frequently changed.

The "Research Center for Equality of Opportunity for Children," established within the Institute for Economic Studies at the Keio University Faculty of Economics, used the "Japan Child Panel Survey (JCPS)" and other data collected through the "Panel Data Research Center" at the same institute to verify how fluctuations in household income due to changes in allowance amounts affected children's educational expenditures and academic performance. The analysis showed that while increases or decreases in household income do change educational expenditures, no evidence was found that this immediately affects children's academic performance (Naoi et al, 2021).

Recently, child allowances have again become a focus of child-rearing support policy. While the policies currently being discussed within the government differ from those of the past, we believe it is necessary to verify what significance past policies had and to conduct discussions based on those findings.

The above research was conducted using data from the Cabinet Office and independently collected data because analysis was impossible using statistical data from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology or the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. The reason for this was that policies for children were divided between two ministries. For example, the Longitudinal Survey of Babies in the 21st Century collected by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare is limited in purpose to health and welfare, and sufficient information regarding education and schools cannot be obtained. As a result, information related to child poverty and health has not been fully utilized in education policy. However, overseas, policies that address poverty and education simultaneously are being tried based on abundant data. One example is a measure that provides allowances on the condition that the child attends school. By providing benefits conditional on regular meetings, health checkups, and school or preschool attendance, it is possible to both visualize the child's situation and provide lifestyle support.

The Children and Families Agency will be established on April 1st of this year. As a researcher involved in this field, I hope that this organization will lead to the conception of new policies through a broader perspective, flexible thinking, and more appropriate data than before.

Akabayashi, et al., 2023, Int. J. of Educational Development 96 102687.

Naoi, et al. 2021. J. Japanese and International Economies, 60. 101122.