Education in Surea

Education in Surea is important for success and competition is consequently very heated and fierce. A centralized administration oversees the process for the education of children from kindergarten to the third and final year of high school. Mathematics, science, Surean, social studies, IT and English are generally considered to be the most important subjects.

The school year is divided into two semesters. The first begins in the beginning of March and ends in mid-July; the second begins in mid-September and ends in late January. They have summer vacation from mid-July to mid-September, and winter vacation from late January to early March, and also take a short vacation from 25th December till 1st January. The schedules are generally standardized, however it can vary slightly from region to region.

Since 2004, compulsory education had gone from 9 years to 12 years. Since then, the number of students continuing to higher education had dramatically increased. 95% of students go on to higher educational institution.

Public education
The public education system in Surea spans nursery schools through university. In 2005 roughly 28% of the central budget was spent on education.

Access to high school and university is controlled by a series of national exams. Discipline in public schools of all levels is generally very tight with school uniforms and morning reveille being the norm. Students of all levels through high school are responsible for cleaning their own classrooms and areas around the school, cleanup time being a daily ritual. Corporal punishment is officially banned, but many reports suggest it is still practiced by many teachers, due in no small part to the fact that most parents support it. The language of instruction is Surean.

Structure
The year structure is summarized in the table below:

Kindergarten and nursery school
Early childhood education begins at home, and there are numerous books and television shows aimed at helping mothers &amp; fathers of preschool children to educate their children and to "parent" more effectively. Much of the home training is devoted to teaching manners, proper social behavior, and structured play, although verbal and number skills are also popular themes. Parents are strongly committed to early education and frequently enroll their children in preschools.

Kindergartens (Youyikuen 幼兒園), are supervised by the Ministry of Knowledge, but are not part of the official education system. The 68 percent of kindergartens that are private accounted for 81 percent of all children enrolled. Whereas kindergartens follow educational aims, preschools are predominately concerned with providing care for infants and toddlers. Same as kindergartens there are public or privately run preschools. Together, these two kinds of institutions enroll well over 90 percent of all preschool-age children prior to their entrance into the formal system at first grade. The Ministry of knowledge's 1992 Course of Study for Preschools, which applies to both kinds of institutions, covers such areas as human relationships, environment, words (language), and expression. Starting from May 2009 the new revision of curriculum guidelines for kindergartens as well as for preschools came into effect.

Kindergarten in Surea is composed of children from ages three to five. When the child reaches about six years of age he/she is systematically moved on to the first year of elementary school. Enrollment in kindergartens or preschools expanded impressively during the 1970s. In 1973 there were 51,433 children attending 501 kindergartens or preschools. By 1979 there were 346,020 children in 8,722 institutions. The number of kindergarten and preschool teachers rose from 2,343 to 13,020 during the same period. The overwhelming majority of these teachers—approximately 92 percent—were women. This growth was attributable to several factors: Ministry of Knowledge encouragement of preschool education, the greater number of women entering the work force, growth in the number of nuclear families where a grandparent was often unavailable to take care of children, and the feeling that kindergarten might give children an "edge" in later educational competition. Kindergartens often paid homage to the expectations of parents with impressive graduation ceremonies, complete with diplomas and gowns.

Primary school
More than 99% of children are enrolled in primary school. All children enter first grade at age six, and starting school is considered a very important event in a child's life.

Virtually all primary education takes place in public schools; less than 4% of the schools are private. Private schools tended to be costly, although the rate of cost increases in tuition for these schools had slowed in the 1990s. Some private elementary schools are prestigious, and they serve as a first step to higher-level private schools with which they are affiliated, and then to a university.

Primary schools span grades 1 through 6, classes are held from Monday through Friday, typically from 7:30 AM through 4PM (or 2PM on Friday). Like middle schools, students are typically assigned to the elementary school closest to their registered place of residence. This leads some parents to file their children's household registration with other relatives or friends for the purpose of sending their children to what are perceived as better schools.

Middle school
Middle school covers grades seven, eight, and nine, children between the ages of roughly 12 and 14, with increased focus on academic studies. Although until the year 2004, it is still possible to leave the formal education system after completing middle school and find employment, fewer than 4% did so by the late 1990s.

Like primary schools, most middle schools in the 1990s were public, but 5% were private. Private schools were costly, averaging 358,892 yen (US$3,589) per student in 1998, more than three times more than the 99,630 yun (US$996) that the ministry estimated as the cost for students enrolled in public middle schools. Teachers often majored in the subjects they taught, and more than 90% graduated from a four-year college. Classes are large, with thirty students per class on average, and each class is assigned a homeroom teacher who doubles as counselor. Unlike primary school students, middle school students have different teachers for different subjects. The teacher, however, rather than the students, moves to a new room for each fifty or forty-five minute period.

Instruction in middle schools tends to rely on the lecture method. Teachers also use other media, such as television and radio, and there is some laboratory work. By 1994 about 40% of all public lower secondary schools had computers, including schools that used them only for administrative purposes. Classroom organization is still based on small work groups of four to six students, although no longer for reasons of discipline.

All course contents are specified in the Course of Study for Middle Schools (CSMS). Some subjects, such as Surean language and mathematics, are coordinated with the primary curriculum. Others, such as foreign-language study, begin at this level, though from May 2009 English will become a compulsory part of the primary school curriculum. The middle school curriculum covers Surean language, English as a second language, social studies, mathematics, science, citizenship, sex education, and physical education. All students are also exposed to industrial arts and homemaking. Moral education and special activities continue to receive attention. Most students also participate in one of a range of school clubs that occupy them until around 6pm most weekdays (including weekends and often before school as well), as part of an effort to address juvenile delinquency.

Unlike the slower pace of primary school, middle school students typically have a single goal in life: to score high on the national high school entrance exams at the end of 9th grade. Consequently, the pressure on students from teachers and parents is intense. Though instruction officially ends around 4PM and extra-curricular activities ends around 6PM, students often stay in school till as late as 9 or 10PM for "extra classes" (which typically consist of extra quizzes and review) or attended cram school.

A growing number of middle school students also attend Bohokusha, cram schools, in the evenings. A focus by students upon these other studies and the increasingly structured demands upon students' time have been criticized by teachers and in the media for contributing to a decline in classroom standards and student performance in recent years.

At the end of their third year, students participate in the national high school entrance exams and are assigned to high schools based upon their scores. Students may also participate in a separate national college of technology entrance exam if they wish to attend vocational school. In both cases, public schools are usually the most popular while private schools have traditionally been viewed as a backup for those unable to score high enough for public schools.

Roughly 97.7% of junior high school students continue on to high or vocational school.

The ministry recognizes a need to improve the teaching of all foreign languages, especially English. To improve instruction in spoken English, the government invites many young native speakers of English to Surea to serve as assistants to school boards and prefectures under its Surean Cross-Teaching Program. Beginning with 640 participants in 1994, the program grew to a high of 6,873 participants in 2005. However, the program has been on the decline in recent years due to several factors, including shrinking local school budgets funding the program, as well as an increasing number of school boards hiring their foreign native speakers directly or through lower-paying, private agencies.