Collaboration between Alternative Education and
the Local Government: A Japanese Case Study
Tetsuro TAKEI[1]
(Graduate Student, the University of Tokyo/
JSPS Research Fellow)
Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, Institute of Education, University of London, 6-8 September 2011
Today, I would like to talk about collaboration between alternative education and local government in Japan, using a case study. My presentation is divided into five parts. First, I will review the background of the topic and introduce the situation of alternative education in Japan. Second, I will describe the alternative school used in my case study and how I collected my data. Third, I will look at the question of external relations and describe how the school handles regulations and evaluations by the local government. Fourth, I will look at the question of internal relations and describe how collaboration with the local government influences the internal relations of the school. Finally, I will present my conclusions. One is that an alternative school can protect its own uniqueness by rejecting some proposals and by establishing credibility even though the staff members recognize that they are in a hierarchical relationship with the local government. The other is that the staff members of an alternative school look to internal relations rather than external relations in order to maintain their fundamental principles.
1. Introduction
Since the 1980s, alternative education designed to meet the special needs of the children who refuse to attend school has become increasingly prominent in Japan. It is said that traditional education systems in Japan have faced a number of problems, such as classroom chaos and school avoidance (truancy). Taking school avoidance as an example, more than 120,000 elementary and junior high school students were absent from school for over 30 days in 2009, according to a survey carried out by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT)[2]. In the 1980s and 1990s, although many people regarded students who refused to attend school as just lazy, many alternative schools were founded to take them in. Alternative schools which take in such students are called “free schools” or “free spaces” in Japan. The alternative education movement adopted a confrontational approach to public education and criticized the uniformity of public schools. MEXT and local governments did not recognize the existence of alternative schools because school avoidance was regarded as a denial of the compulsory education system.
However, alternative schools have received more and more official recognition in recent years. In the mid-1990s, MEXT admitted the fact that school avoidance was a phenomenon that could occur in any child, and permitted students to attend alternative schools. In 1999, MEXT started the Schooling Support Program, a system for providing subsidies to free schools and free spaces that agreed to take part in a joint survey of school avoidance. Some alternative schools received accreditation under the special zones for structural reform and obtained the same status as schools providing compulsory education. Local governments have attempted to build new relations with the alternative education movement.
The changes in the circumstances surrounding school avoidance have been evaluated both positively and negatively by researchers. Indeed, it is very important for free schools and free spaces to receive official recognition and get subsidies because most alternative schools are hard-pressed for funds. It is a significant achievement that children who refuse to attend school are no longer criticized, and that not only alternative schools, but also local governments, attempt to meet their special needs. However, some researchers have expressed concern about the danger of free schools and free spaces losing their uniqueness as a result of regulations that local governments may impose. When free schools and free spaces in Japan received little financial support from the government, they were free from government regulations and evaluations. In contrast, after working with the government and receiving public subsidies, free schools or free spaces inevitably become subject to some degree of government control. In 2007 Nagata pointed out that the Japanese government’s administration of education with regard to alternative education had shifted from a passive support and laissez-faire-type model to an active support and management-type model, and predicted that alternative education would take on the role of a supplement to mainstream education. In fact, the underlying aim of the Schooling Support Program was to bring students back to school, although many free schools and free spaces did not make it a goal to have students attend school again. Alternative schools may standardize their unique practices under the pressure of government regulations and evaluations.
Against this background, the aim of my research was to examine how the organizational behavior of alternative schools changes after working with local governments, using the theory of organizational culture. In previous works about alternative education in Japan, an analytic focus was applied to the quality and quantity of the regulations and the evaluations that the public agencies set in order to assure the quality of education (Nagata 2007). When researchers express concern about the loss of alternative schools’ uniqueness, it is assumed that the regulations and the evaluations could change the practices of free schools and free spaces directly. However, we have to examine the organizational behavior of alternative schools more precisely and look at both external relations and internal relations. Referring to the theory of organizational culture, it is expected that alternative schools will negotiate with the government and couple their practices with environmental pressures, though alternative schools may not ignore the external environment when they gain social credibility and public subsidies (Binder 2007). Additionally, it is very important for nonprofit organizations like free schools and free spaces to integrate their members into their own uniqueness, and they try to maintain their distinctive characteristics after collaborating with the government. Therefore, I will address two research questions. One is how an alternative school handles regulations and evaluations by the local government. The other is how collaboration with the local government influences the internal relations of an alternative school.
2. Data and Methodology
To study these research questions, I used data obtained from fieldwork I conducted with an NPO (nonprofit organization) named CAWA (pseudonym), which was established in 1991 to meet the special needs of children who refuse to attend school. Like other free schools and free spaces, CAWA displays distinctive characteristics which differ from public schools, and it emphasizes the individuality of students rather than their uniformity. Originally, CAWA was operated with membership fees because it received little financial support from the government. However, the local government attempted to build new relations with CAWA as the circumstances surrounding school avoidance changed in the late 1990s. The local government commissioned CAWA to operate a public free space, and CAWA has been receiving public subsidies since 2003. CAWA now accepts about 100 children who refuse to attend school.
The data was mainly gathered using in-depth interviews with the staff of CAWA. There are 11 staff members in CAWA, and the organization still displays distinctive characteristics common to other free schools or free spaces, such as emphasizing the individuality of students, having a family-type atmosphere, and valuing cooperation over competition[3]. The staff members have been working at CAWA from between 3 to 20 years. I interviewed each of them about how they cope with environmental pressures and their opinions on whether working with the local government has had an influence on the way CAWA operates.
3. External Relations
Since CAWA was commissioned to operate a public free space, the local government has conducted annual evaluations to make sure it adequately satisfies users’ needs, assigns personnel properly, and so on. In order to build favorable relations and to receive financial support, the staff members of CAWA have to put weight on obtaining the trust of the local government. Therefore, they accept over 200 visitors per year and organize lectures for parents with teenage children. CAWA not only operates a public free space but also carries out a wide range of other projects, and the staff members need to continue achieving concrete results each year in order to receive a high evaluation from the local government. One staff member said that she couldn’t see to what degree they had to show successful results. They seem to recognize that they are in a hierarchical relationship with the local government.
However, they don’t undertake all the projects that the local government proposes. For example, when the local government asked CAWA to work with them in supporting hikikomori, the Japanese term for young people suffering from social withdrawal, the staff members held a meeting and rejected the proposal. They expressed concern about losing their own distinctive practices because supporting the young people would cause a major change in personnel assignments. The founder of CAWA pointed out that they decide to stick to their own practices and reject some proposals for collaboration because they feel that, “We cannot do any more.” They carefully select which projects they should undertake in order to meet the special needs of the children who refuse to attend school and to maintain their distinctive characteristics such as emphasizing individuality, having a family-type atmosphere, and valuing cooperation over competition.
In addition, the staff members try to interact with public schools and the local community. They use three concrete approaches to try to change the thoughts and feelings of public schools and the local community toward children who refuse to attend school. First, CAWA staff members attend meetings in which the teachers of nearby schools discuss measures to deal with school avoidance. They said that face-to-face discussions enabled the teachers to think about how to guarantee the best interests of each child who refuses to attend school. Second, CAWA does not hesitate to have a relationship with local residents. Every Wednesday the staff members and the children clean up the neighborhood area. They not only take part in the festivals organized by the local neighborhood association but also organize their own festivals, in which neighborhood kids can participate[4]. Third, they do not present CAWA as a special space. In an interview one staff member stated as follows:
I would like to point out that the children who attend the free space are not special, but normal.… They just choose to refuse to attend school. It is the same as the refusal to attend cram school. … Therefore, CAWA is not so special.
Though the circumstances surrounding school avoidance have changed, not everyone accepts the notion that refusal to attend school is a phenomenon that could occur in any child. Therefore, it is very important for the staff members to try to remove biased views toward the children who refuse to attend school. When they organize briefing sessions about the public free space, they deliver the positive message that there are a huge variety of children in CAWA and that the atmosphere of CAWA is not that different from the outside society. Actually, CAWA has the fundamental principle that nobody is excluded, as I will discuss later, and the members try to accept any child even if the child attends public school again.
4. Internal Relations
As observed above, the staff members are aware that they are in a hierarchical relationship with the local government, but protect their own uniqueness by rejecting some proposals from the government and by establishing credibility with public schools and the local community. In the meantime, how has collaboration with the local government influenced the internal relations of CAWA?
First, the staff members said that parents’ commitment to CAWA had changed. Though it receives financial support from the local government, CAWA does not have enough money to run the public free space. As annual expenditure is about twice as much as public subsidies for a year, it is still very important to collect membership fees from the parents. However, the founder of CAWA said that the membership fees that each parent paid were decreasing because parents tended to think of CAWA as a “public” day-care center for children. Actually, it was reported in the bulletin that the total amount of membership fees was not increasing though the members of CAWA were gradually increasing[5]. The founder also appealed to parents in the bulletin as follows[6].
Though we receive public subsidies, you should not think that you can leave the operation of the free space up to CAWA staff members alone. Unless all members, including parents, take part in the activities of CAWA, we cannot form a free space. … If you haven’t visited CAWA since your child became a member, I would like you to participate in a get-together for parents.
One of the fundamental principles of CAWA is that all members, including parents, take part in the activities and form the free space. Even if it is difficult for poor families to pay the membership fee, the staff members want them to participate in the events. However, some parents don’t visit CAWA after their child becomes a member. This lack of engagement, as well as the decrease in the membership fee paid by each parent, represents the change in parents’ commitment. The staff members try to share the fundamental principles with the parents though their commitment might change.
Second, the staff members have had to cope with children with more complex difficulties since CAWA began collaborating with the local government. As previously discussed, CAWA tries to establish credibility by interacting with public schools and the local community. As a result, not only educational institutions such as public schools and readjustment guidance centers but also social-service agencies such as child consultation centers and hospitals introduce CAWA to the children who refuse to attend school. One staff member told me that social-service agencies are asking CAWA to work together with them more and more frequently. The routes of entry to CAWA widening, the founder recognizes the following influence:
There were much fewer delinquent youngsters before. We could understand the difficulties that the children had even if they seemed to have a disability. …Cases in which we cannot understand the child’s difficulties are increasing. We didn’t have many chances to meet children who faced complicated difficulties previously, but we meet them now. We can’t see how to cope with the difficulties faced by the children.