Selling Education Policy as Revolution

Shinzo Abe administration completed a draft of new economic policy package for enhancing support for education. Naming it Human Resource Revolution, set with Productivity Revolution for economic incentives, the government will pour annual ¥2 trillion into education for free, starting April 2020, the year of Tokyo Olympic Games. This can be recognized as a subsidy to back up the movement of constitutional amendment, which the administration has been focusing on as the biggest political agenda in 2020.

One pillar of Human Resource Revolution is subsidy for the children before the age for elementary school. The government will pay all the cost for children in their age of 0 to 2 to go to nursery school where working mothers leave their kids in the daytime. The policy is applied to the families with ¥2.5 million or less annual income, which are categorized in waiver of residence tax.

All the children in their age of 3 to 5 will be included in education for free policy regardless the category of school, nursery or kindergarten, or annual income. But, the school needs to be the ones licensed by the government. For unregistered schools, Abe administration will consider settling experts’ conference to discuss the possibility and conclude as early as next summer. Subsidy for the children in their age of 5 will be introduced in advance in April 2019.

The subsidy for higher education -- college, high school or academy for specific career -- will be separated between public and private. To the residential tax waivered families, the government will pay for entrance fee and whole annual tuition, about ¥540 thousand, of national university. For the annual tuition of private university, which amounts to ¥860 thousand, it will pay the amount with certain addition to national university’s tuition.

In the name of increasing human resource for education, the administration will save ¥340 billion to incubate 320 thousand personnel for nursery schools by FY 2020. For nursery facilities for elder people, it will apply ¥100 billion for raising salary of the workers. One worker in such a facility for ten years or more will receive additional ¥80 thousand in monthly salary.

Although the policy package is recognized as an economic stimulus, actual impact on economic growth can be limited. It is rather a populist policy to attract the people without obvious benefit from Abe’s economic policy, most of them are in a low income level. Abe hopes to have a national referendum for constitutional amendment in 2019. It would be regarded as a driving force to collect political support for the agenda.