Japan to get first literacy survey in 70 years

Jun 12 (NHK) - A team of linguists will conduct Japan's first literacy rate survey in more than 70 years.

Associate Professor Hiroshi Noyama of the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics will lead the team.

The survey will be conducted on Japanese and foreign citizens aged 16 and older, who are either attending night classes at junior high schools or Japanese-language classes.

The questions will be designed to determine comprehension of basic Japanese sentences. Participants will also be interviewed about their daily lives.

Night classes are available for people without a sufficient education.

Japan has a reputation for an extremely high literacy rate. However, a growing number of children do not attend school due to truancy or parental abuse.

There are also more children in Japan with foreign roots, who may not use Japanese as a first language.

Associate Professor Noyama says the team will consider how to conduct the survey so that it helps to realize a multicultural society with a guaranteed basic education.

The last literacy rate survey was conducted in 1948.

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