PED 09: The Teacher and the Curriculum

Comparative Analysis between the Philippine Educational System and

Japanese Educational System

Introduction
Education is a significant vehicle of acquiring essential knowledge and skills. It
plays a vital role in forming individuals to be effective. It offers us the chance to turn into
productive member of a civilized society by acquiring all the necessary skills. We learn
how to address challenges and overcome obstacles. We learn how to become an
integrated personality and maintain the propagation our culture. Individuals learn
fundamental norms, rules, regulations, and values of society through education.

Our world is constantly changing and developing so it is very important to teach

and bring up intelligent people who could understand the problems of modern society
and solve them in a proper way. It is important because it gives us knowledge of the
world around us and changes it something better, it develops us for perfective of looking
in life, it helps us to build opinions and have points at view of things on life. Basically
education is very important system wherein we creates memories, learn something
practically not for all the subject but also about learning different wondrous and
interesting things related to our whole life.

In this paper, we are going to discuss the comparison of the Philippine and
Japanese Educational system and also find aspects of each system that each country
can learn from. The education systems of Japan and the Philippines are different in
terms of various aspects of education.

Formal Education
Formal education is the hierarchically structured, chronologically graded
'education system', running from primary school through the university and including, in
addition to general academic studies, a variety of specialized programs and institutions
for full-time technical and professional training. K-12 and tertiary education from
colleges are characterized as formal education. This does not include the informal
education in the Philippines learned from daily experience and the educative influences
 PED 09: The Teacher and the Curriculum

and resources in his or her environment. Nor does this include non-formal education like
the alternative learning systems provided by the Department of Education
(DepEd), Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) and other
programs from educational institutions.

While, Japan’s formal education began with the adoption of Chinese culture, in
the 6th century AD. Buddhist and Confucian teachings as well as sciences, calligraphy,
divination and literature were taught at the courts of Asuka, Nara and Heian. Scholar
officials were chosen through an Imperial examination system

Curriculum
The Philippine curriculum is referred to as K -12 Enhanced Basic Education
Curriculums. It aims to enhance learners’ basic skills, produce more competent citizens
and prepare graduates for lifelong learning and employment. “K” stands for
Kindergarten and “12” refers to the succeeding 12 years of basic education (6 years of
elementary education, 4 years of junior high school, and 2 years of senior high school).

It gives students the chance to choose among three tracks (i.e. Academic;
Technical-Vocational-Livelihood; and Sports and Arts) and undergo immersion, which
provides relevant exposure and actual experience in their chosen track.

On the other hand, the Japanese school system primarily consists of six-year
elementary schools, three-year junior high schools and three-year high schools,
followed by two-or-three-year junior colleges or four-year colleges. Compulsory
education lasts for 9 years through elementary and junior high school. School
exchanges during Japan Educational Travel are mainly implemented in junior high and
high schools.

School Life
In the Philippines, high school students generally take 10 subjects per school
year which are mandated by the National Department of Education for all high schools.
Elective subjects are not the norm in public schools. Typical school days are from
7:30am to 5pm, Monday to Friday. Students are rarely asked how they personally feel
about a topic or requested to expand learning and investigate on their own. Students
 PED 09: The Teacher and the Curriculum

are not familiar with receiving immediate feedback and one-to-one consultations about
academic performance; they usually wait for comments on the report card at the end of
the grading quarter. Student-teacher consultations are rare and parent-teacher
consultations are the norm. In the case of Japan, Public schools have classes five days
a week, from Monday to Friday. There are also schools that have classes on Saturday.
In junior high and high schools, there are six class periods each day, typically lasting 50
minutes for each. After classes, students clean the classrooms in shifts and then start
their club activities. There are a variety of clubs such as cultural and sports ones.

School Rules

There are provided school rules and regulation for both countries. Those rules
and regulation included in this paper are the most common. In Japanese schools are
the following: Wearing of Complete Uniform; the complete school uniform should be
worn at all times within the school premises on school days and on other days when
there is an official function. For boys, the uniform consists of a white polo shirt jack with
MHSS logo on the pocket (worn over a white undershirt), navy blue pants, well-polished
black low-cut leather shoes, and black socks. For girls, the uniform consists of a white
shirt sleeve blouse, navy blue skirt, well-shined black low-cut leather shoes, and plain
white socks. While in Japanese schools are the following: You can’t have your
favorite hairstyle at school. It’s because children might be distracted by their hair.
Boys have to have a simple cut with no styling or layering. On the other hand, girls can
have their hair long or tie it up if they want. But styling it is not allowed in any way. No
good appearances are allowed, Children in Japanese schools are told to focus only
on their education. Girls are not allowed to wear makeup, paint their nails, or shave their
legs. No relationships at school, this is tough when you have a crush on someone
from your class. If you were there, you would never act on your feelings, because
relationships are strictly banned in Japanese schools. According to teachers, Japanese
students are too young to think about that topic. No substitute teachers, if a teacher is
absent or sick, then the class that teacher was supposed to take is not assigned to a
different teacher. Instead, the students are alone in class studying on their own.
Greetings are a must, in the morning; every student must greet the teacher in their
 PED 09: The Teacher and the Curriculum

class. It is a tradition for some schools to start the day off with some meditation, so the
students have some positive energy in them before they start their long day.

Education in the Time of Pandemic

Philippines the present COVID-19 pandemic has brought extraordinary

challenges and has affected the educational sectors, and no one know when it will end.
Every country is presently implementing plans and procedures on how to contain the
virus, and the infections are still continually rising. In the educational context, to sustain
and provide quality education despite lockdown and community quarantine, the new
normal should be taken into consideration in the planning and implementation of the
“new normal educational policy”. This article presents opportunities for responding
issues, problems and trends that are currently arising and will arise in the future due to
COVID-19 pandemic through the lens of education in the Philippines - the new
educational norm. In the case of Japan, students have had a rough six months and the
immediate future isn’t looking much brighter. While much of the country has more or
less returned to some semblance of normalcy, students have almost been left behind in
terms of their studies.Some media commentators argue that online learning can be just
as effective as the in-person academic experience. True, there’s a view that online
learning slashes commuting time both to and from campus, which leaves a large chunk
of time for concentrated studying. However, being cooped up in an apartment and
milling with fellow students in a lecture hall are different things entirely. In case of
Philippines the present COVID-19 pandemic has brought extraordinary challenges and
has affected the educational sectors, and no one knows when it will end. Every country
is presently implementing plans and procedures on how to contain the virus, and the
infections are still continually rising. In the educational context, to sustain and provide
quality education despite lockdown and community quarantine, the new normal should
be taken into consideration in the planning and implementation of the “new normal
educational policy”. This article presents opportunities for responding issues, problems
and trends that are currently arising and will arise in the future due to COVID-19
pandemic through the lens of education in the Philippines - the new educational norm.
 PED 09: The Teacher and the Curriculum

Poverty in Education

Philippines are living in extreme poverty, surviving on an average budget of

$1.25 per day. An average Filipino family consists of six children, of which two of the
children are likely to be stunted due to malnutrition. According to medical experts,
children who remain malnourished in the first 1000 days of their lives do not fully
develop the neural connections in their brains. This can be a major stumbling block, as
it inhibits their ability to reach their full potential, thereby damaging their chances of
proper education. While in Japan, kids who lack financial resources are far less likely to
stay in school through the age of 18 or beyond, government statistics show, in a nation
where about two-thirds of students attend cram schools and tuition fees for one subject
can cost tens of thousands of yen a month. Those on welfare risk passing poverty on to
the next generation, as their lack of qualifications means they later struggle to earn
enough to educate their own children. The government passed a law in 2013 mandating
a blueprint to help the poor, including placing more social workers in schools and
providing more free after-school tutoring for struggling students. While in the Philippines
Education is a basic factor in economic development and how poverty affects the
education in the Philippines. At the microeconomic level, education has an important
role in social mobility, equity, public health, better opportunities for employment, etc. In
the case of the Philippines, Filipinos have a high rate of illiteracy.

Foreign Language Education

English is one of the compulsory subjects in the Philippines because aside from
Filipino, it is considered the official language used in different transactions at schools
and other institutions in the country (Porciuncula, 2011). Transitions in the curriculum
and Medium of Instruction (MOI) were observed from Bilingual Education to the current
K to 12 curricula, highlighting the implementation of the Mother Tongue Based
Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) to the early stage of education among
learners (Madrunio, Martin, & Plata, 2016). Since then, according to Bernard (2011),
there has been consistent and systematic documentation of students' learning
difficulties associated with using the English language as the medium of instruction
knowing the fact that English is a foreign language.
 PED 09: The Teacher and the Curriculum

The English language education in the Philippines is frequently faced with low
academic performance among Filipino students. This is due to many factors, such as
poverty, lack of school facilities, qualified teachers, and learning resources (Madrunio,
Martin, & Plata, 2016). Likewise, scholars imply that these unfortunate factors
contributed to the low results in functional literacy skills which are apparent in the
Program for International Student Assessment data (PISA 2018 results, 2019).

In Japanese schools, English is a compulsory subject in junior high and high

schools. There are also elementary schools that introduce English education from
intermediate grade classes. In some high schools, apart from English, students are also
allowed to take courses in Chinese, Korean, French, German, etc.

Japan’s government sees new social factors emerging in the twenty-first century:
an aging population, cultural diversification, and the continuing modernist trope of Japan
as a “monolingual” and “monocultural” nation. In national language policy, the Japanese
government adopted a standard language (hyojungo). The growth of non-Japanese
nationalities is an emerging demography. There are minority languages and Indigenous
languages. The economic successes from the 1970s enabled families to spend more on
education in a globalizing world. These factors led to a call to “internationalize the
Japanese people.” There is concern that foreign language education is becoming
subsumed under a quasi-nationalistic and ideological policy of the central government
of “globalization.” There are concerns about a growing insularity among young
Japanese and to improve their communication and problem-solving skills. English
classes are currently offered once a week in the final 2 years of elementary school, and
there are government plans to teach from grade 3 and make English a formal subject by
the year 2020. Korean as a foreign language is the fastest-growing foreign language of
study in Japan, and there are Chinese ethnic bilingual schools.

Conclusion
The Japanese treat education as very important, which is the reason why the
country has the highest literacy rates in the world (Grolier, 1990). In the case of
Philippines, Filipinos have a deep point of view of education, in which it is treated as the
main street of further social and economic mobility. This was materialized from the
 PED 09: The Teacher and the Curriculum

Americans due to their colonial rule, where the ideal of democratic society in which
individuals could get ahead through good educational attainment (Country Studies,
n.d.). It can be inferred that Japan and the Philippines share the same point of view, in
which education is the road to further mobility of a country.

Education is not just about being successful and learning different lessons,
education help us to create memories, this may a mark a big part of us, a big part of our
life. Those memories being with your teacher and with those different people whom you
had meet along the way. But yet, the most important thing in Education is the lesson
you've learned and realize along your way. The lesson that made you realize why does
it need to be like this, how can be applied to the reality or why those things need to be
happened, Education will lead us to have a better future to be a better person than the
person we were before everything that had already happened.

References:
https://education.jnto.go.jp/en/school-exchanges/japanese-education-system/

https://web-
japan.org/kidsweb/explore/schools/#:~:text=The%20basic%20school%20system%20in,go%20o
n%20to%20high%20school.

https://wenr.wes.org/2018/03/education-in-the-
philippines#:~:text=Elementary%20education%20in%20the%20Philippines,of%20the%20basic
%20education%20cycle.

https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007%2F978-3-319-02320-5_36-2

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/09/10/national/social-issues/one-six-japanese-
children-live-poverty-threatening-education-future/
https://nextstepph.com/how-poverty-affects-the-education-in-the-philippines/