The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications is requesting the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology to move forward with efforts to eliminate the need for chaperones, as there are cases in which parents of "medical care children" who require medical support on a daily basis are required to chaperone at school events, etc., creating a burden. We have issued a notice asking for the same.
Regarding children in medical care, the government enacted a law to support children in medical care and their families in 2021, in order to prevent parents from being unable to work and accompany them to school due to sputum inhalation. We have established a system in which a nurse will be assigned to allow children to attend school without being accompanied by their parents.
The Administrative Evaluation Bureau of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications conducted a survey on the situation of children receiving medical care in elementary schools at the boards of education in 32 municipalities across the country from December last year to this month in order to understand the actual situation after the law came into effect.
As a result, approximately half of the boards of education found cases in which parents were required to accompany their children to school on days when the assigned nurses were off, as well as on field trips and overnight learning days.
The reason given was that they were unable to secure enough nurses to replace them.
On the other hand, some schools have been able to eliminate the need for parents to attend by outsourcing nurses to local visiting nursing stations.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications has issued a notice to the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, requesting that the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology take this example as a reference and move forward with efforts to eliminate the need for parents to accompany children.
In response to the notification, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology commented, ``Based on these findings, we would like to continue our efforts to eliminate the need for nurses and attendants.''