Japan Learning Poverty Brief June 2022 LEARNING POVERTY: A WORLD BANK-UIS INDICA- LEARNING POVERTY IN JAPAN TOR TO HIGHLIGHT THE LEARNING CRISIS • Learning Poverty. 4 percent of children in Japan at All children should be able to read by age 10. Reading is a late primary age today are not pro cient in reading, gateway for learning as the child progresses through school— adjusted for the out-of-school children. and conversely, an inability to read constrains opportunities for further learning. Reading pro ciency is also critical for • Learning Deprivation. Large-scale learning assess- foundational learning in other subjects. ments of students in Japan indicate that 2 percent do not achieve the MPL at the end of primary school, prox- In low- and middle-income countries, more than half the ied by data from grade 4 in 2019. children cannot read and understand a simple story by the end of primary school. This learning crisis threatens coun- • Schooling Deprivation. In Japan, 2 percent of primary tries’ e orts to build human capital and achieve the Sustain- school-aged children are not enrolled in school. These able Development Goals (SDGs), undermining sustainable children are excluded from learning in school. growth and poverty reduction. Tackling the learning crisis in the foreseeable future requires For countries with very low Schooling Deprivation, the share rapid progress at a scale that has not been seen yet. To gal- of children with Learning Deprivation will be very close to vanize action on this crisis, we introduced the concept of the reported Learning Poverty. Learning Poverty (LP), a measure constructed jointly by the Notes: The LP number for Japan is calculated using the Global Learning Assessment Database World Bank and the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS). (GLAD) harmonization based on TIMSS and the MPL threshold used was level Low (400 points). For more details, please consult the GLAD and Learning Poverty repositories in WHAT IS LEARNING POVERTY? GitHub. Learning Poverty means being unable to read and understand BENCHMARKING JAPAN’S LEARNING POVERTY a short, age-appropriate text by age 10. All foundational skills are important, but we focus on reading because: (i) read- Learning Poverty in Japan is 31 percentage points lower than ing pro ciency is an easily understood measure of learning; the average for the East Asia and Paci c region and 11.5 per- (ii) reading is a student’s gateway to learning in every other centage points lower than the average for high income coun- area; and, (iii) reading pro ciency can serve as a proxy for tries. foundational learning in other subjects. The Learning Poverty indicator allows us to illustrate Figure 1. Learning Poverty and components progress toward SDG 4’s broader goal to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education for all. It particularly high- lights progress towards SDG 4.1.1b, which speci es that all children at the end of primary reach at least a minimum pro ciency level (MPL) in reading. HOW IS LEARNING POVERTY MEASURED? The indicator combines the share of primary-aged children out-of-school who are Schooling Deprived (SD), and the share of pupils below a minimum pro ciency in reading, who are Learning Deprived (LD). By combining schooling and learning, the indicator brings into focus both “more school- ing”, which by itself serves a variety of critical functions, as well as “better learning,” which is important to ensure that time spent in school translates into acquisition of skills and capabilities. LP = SD + [(1 − SD) × LD] Source: UIS and World Bank as of May 2021. Notes: (1) Yellow circle represents Japan; (2) Gray circles represent other countries; and, (3) where, LP is Learning Poverty; LD , Learning Deprivation, is share of children at the end Vertical lines re ect the averages of Japan’s region and income group. of primary below minimum pro ciency, as de ned by the Global Alliance to Monitor Learning (GAML) in the context of the SDG 4.1.1b monitoring; SD , Schooling Deprivation, is the share of primary-aged children who are out-of-school, and is linked to SDG 4.1.4. All out-of-school children are implicitly assumed to be below minimum pro ciency. The data used to calculate Learning Poverty has been made possible thanks to the work of the Global Alliance to Moni- tor Learning led by UIS, which established minimum pro- ciency levels that enable countries to benchmark learning across di erent cross-national and national assessments. Japan Learning Poverty Brief June 2022 HOW DOES JAPAN’S GENDER GAP COMPARE GLOB- PRIMARY EDUCATION EXPENDITURE ALLY? There is no UIS comparable data on primary education ex- As in most countries, Learning Poverty is higher for boys penditure per child in Japan so only region and income level than for girls in Japan. of Japan is displayed. This result is a composition of two e ects. First, the share of out-of-school children is higher for boys (2%) than for girls (1.6%). Second, boys are less likely to achieve minimum pro ciency Figure 3. Expenditure per child of primary school age at the end of primary school (2.5%) than girls (1.1%) in Japan. Table 1 shows sex disaggregation for Learning Poverty and Human Capital Index (HCI) education components when- ever available. Table 1. Sex Disaggregation Indicators and Components Boys Girls All Learning Poverty 4.4 2.6 3.6 Learning Deprivation 2.5 1.1 1.8 Schooling Deprivation 2 1.6 1.8 Source: UIS and World Bank as of May 2021. Note: Primary education expenditure per child Human Capital Index NA NA 0.8 is calculated as total expenditure on primary education divided by total number of children Learning-Adjusted Years of Schooling NA NA 11.7 of primary school age. Source: UIS and World Bank for LP, LD and SD as of May 2021; EdStats/WDI (World Development Indicators) for HCI and LAYS (Learning-Adjusted Years of Schooling); The Full Learning Poverty database is available for download at the Development Data Hub. DATA AND DATA GAPS ON LEARNING AND SCHOOL- ING IN JAPAN Figure 2. Gender Gap - Learning Poverty by Sex Japan administers a National Large-Scale Assessment (NLSA) at the end of primary school, according to UIS SDG 4.1.1b monitoring. If this NLSA is mapped against the SDG 4 Global Pro ciency Framework using policy linking, student link- ing or item linking, it may be possible to monitor Learning Poverty with it in the future. Japan participated in the following published cross-national learning assessments in recent years: TIMSS (2003, 2007, 2011, 2015, 2019) and PISA (2000, 2006, 2009, 2012, 2015, 2018). Japan has not participated in the World Bank’s LeAP diagnos- tic exercise to analyze its assessment system. To get started, contact the LeAP team. Notes: The de nition of NLSA does not include National Exams; LeAP: Learning Assessment Source: UIS and World Bank as of May 2021. Notes: (1) - Yellow circle represents Japan; and, Platform (LeAP-team@worldbank.org). TIMSS: Trends in International Mathematics and (2) The closer a country is to the dotted line the smaller its LP gender gap. Science Study. PISA: Programme for International Student Assessment. For questions re- lated to the data in the brief, contact the EduAnalytics team (eduanalytics@worldbank.org). POINT OF CONTACT Japan: N/A East Asia and Paci c: Marie-Helene Cloutier #LearningPoverty Disclaimer: The numbers in this brief are based on data harmonization e orts by UIS and the World Bank to increase cross-country comparability of learning data. Therefore, numbers may be di erent from o cial statistics reported by governments. Such di erences are due to their di erent purposes, which can be global comparison or meeting national de nitions.