Schools have become smaller due to the declining birthrate and depopulation, and it has been found that more than 430 cases of public elementary and junior high schools have been consolidated or abolished nationwide in the last three years.
As a result of a survey conducted by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology on the boards of education of prefectures and municipalities nationwide this year, the number of consolidations of elementary and junior high schools and compulsory education schools nationwide reached 437 in the three years from 2019 to this year. 1055 schools have been integrated into 454 schools.
There are 199 municipalities that answered that there is no school that can be integrated even if there is an extremely small school, 46% of the respondents said that it was difficult to integrate due to geographical factors and school distance, and 1 elementary and junior high school in the local government. 39% answered that there were only schools.
The national government has set the standard number of classes from 12 to 18 for elementary schools, assuming class changes, but the number of elementary schools with 11 or less classes is 9458, which is 50% of the total.
When asked about issues and concerns about optimizing the scale of schools through consolidation and abolition, many of them said "consensus building with parents and local residents", "maintenance of local communities", "geographical factors, transportation". Circumstances "was mentioned.
In the survey, many respondents requested the government to provide support such as additional distribution of faculty and staff, facility maintenance due to consolidation and abolition, and assistance in introducing school buses.