Britain’s Educational Reform: A Comparison with Japan

The Education Reform Act has introduced massive change to the British education system, in part to make Britain more competitive. This book examines the reforms from the perspective of the Japanese education system and its contribution to that country’s economic success. Questions are raised about comparative standards of educational attainment in the two countries and about the content and structure of education, highlighting dimensions missing from Britain’s proposed reforms, but already present in Japan. The book questions some of Britain’s idiosyncratic notions of education: the highly structured, early differentiation of the learning programme according to pupil ability, the elitism of A-level, the work-related objectives of TVEI and the historical shaping of our attitudes to education, training, industry and work.