TOKYO - A bill to revise the Kyūtoku Law, aiming to improve the treatment of Japan's public school teachers by gradually raising the salary supplement in place of overtime pay from 4% to 10%, was approved by the Lower House Committee on Education on Wednesday after ruling and opposition parties agreed on revisions.
The amendment to the Act on Special Measures for the Improvement of School Teachers' Salaries—known as the Kyūtoku Law—centers on gradually raising the salary supplement paid in lieu of overtime compensation from the current 4% of base pay to 10%.
In addition to this, the ruling and opposition parties agreed to include supplementary provisions calling for measures to reduce average monthly overtime for teachers to around 30 hours by fiscal 2029, and to ensure that all public junior high schools shift to 35-student class sizes by the next academic year.
The revised bill passed the Lower House committee with majority support from both ruling and opposition parties and is scheduled to be sent to the Upper House later this week. It is expected to be enacted during the current Diet session.
The Kyūtoku Law was originally enacted in 1971 as a legal framework to exempt public school teachers from standard labor laws regarding overtime compensation. Instead of calculating and paying for actual overtime hours, the law introduced a uniform 4% salary supplement on top of the base salary. This system was based on the assumption that teachers' work, including lesson planning, extracurricular supervision, and administrative duties, inherently extended beyond regular hours and could not be accurately measured or remunerated by the hour. While the law was intended to simplify salary management and acknowledge the unique demands of teaching, it gradually became a source of controversy as teachers' workloads increased dramatically without a corresponding rise in compensation or structural reform.
Over the past two decades, the education community and labor experts increasingly raised concerns that the 4% supplement failed to reflect the real burden placed on teachers, especially in secondary education, where teachers are expected to manage clubs, attend frequent meetings, and conduct student counseling well into the evening. Numerous surveys and reports revealed that many teachers in Japan were working more than 60 hours a week, often without breaks, leading to high rates of burnout, mental health issues, and in some tragic cases, karōshi (death from overwork). The rigid compensation model, set in law, prevented schools and boards of education from offering flexible or performance-based pay adjustments, effectively institutionalizing unpaid labor in one of the country’s most critical public service sectors.
Calls for reform intensified in the 2010s, with teacher unions, advocacy groups, and opposition lawmakers urging a reassessment of the Kyūtoku Law's core framework. The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) conducted several internal reviews and acknowledged that the system was outdated. Yet political will to revise the law remained limited, partly due to the complexity of restructuring public education funding and partly due to fears of budget strain at the municipal level, where most public school salaries are paid. Nonetheless, teacher shortages, declining morale, and worsening work-life balance made the status quo increasingly untenable.
In recent years, bipartisan consensus began to form around the need to at least revise the supplementary pay rate. The proposal to raise the 4% supplement to 10% gradually emerged as a compromise that acknowledges teachers' excessive workloads without immediately overhauling the overtime system itself. The revision bill, shaped by discussions between the ruling coalition and opposition parties, reflects this delicate balance. It retains the framework of the Kyūtoku Law but updates its most controversial feature—the flat overtime supplement—while also introducing attached provisions to address other long-standing issues, such as the push for 35-student class sizes and targeted overtime reduction by fiscal 2029.
The bill’s passage on May 14th, 2025, by the Lower House’s education committee represents the first major revision to the Kyūtoku Law in over 50 years. While supporters view it as a meaningful first step toward better treatment of teachers, critics warn that without enforceable limits on work hours or deeper institutional reform, the changes risk being symbolic. The legislation now heads to the Upper House, where it is expected to pass and be enacted within the current Diet session, marking a historic, if partial, correction to a long-criticized law.
Source: TBS
