Establishment of the Act to Promote the Computerization of Education

 ■Establishment of the Act to Promote the Computerization of Education

　The Diet established the “Act to Promote the Computerization of School Education.”

1 year prior to this, systemization of “digital textbooks” was achieved through the revisions to the School Education Act and other laws presented by the government.

　This law is the other engine to significantly advance the computerization of school education through comprehensive measures for municipalities to formulate and execute plans for promotion.

　However, digital textbooks and programming are not possible without computers and the internet. We want to enter EdTech as soon as possible but we are still far away. Although the government has established an annual budget of 180 billion yen, municipalities are using this budget for other purposes through the local subsidy tax measure. The engine to divert these funds to the field of education had been weak.

　This law was drafted by the nonpartisan “Parliamentary Association Aiming to Promote ICT Usage for Education.” It began in February 2015, and 83 members, including former ministers from all parties. Nongovernment advisors like myself also participated in the process to submit a bill that we drafted to the Diet, resulting in the establishment of this law.

Originally, the Digital Textbook and Teaching Association (DiTT, currently the Learning of Tomorrow Association) suggested the “establishment of the Act to Promote the Computerization of Education” in 2015, and a policy to assign a caucus of the Diet to establish this law was put in place in 2016.

　There were troublesome issues also. At the beginning, members of the caucus of the Diet, including myself, were blacklisted by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology, perhaps because our political activity was frowned upon, and members of the industry hesitated to cooperate.  Given that government officials change every 1-2 years while we had not changed for 20 years, and that we are used to bans, we ignored this and carried on.

　When I was asked for my opinion during the caucus of the Diet, I pointed out that the rest of the world was 2 laps ahead of us in terms of advancing education in the age of AI. Therefore, I established the nongovernment Learning of Tomorrow Association and advocate for a system of cooperation between industry and academia. I stated that preparing infrastructure, such as for bring your own device (BYOD) and the cloud, and developing the latest technologies, such as AI and blockchain, are both important.

　The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology became more forward-thinking, given that the departments and managers had also changed, and began to promote usage of the cloud. A path was also cleared for BYOD, in which students bring their own device to study. They are also showing a proactive stance toward the use of data and AI in education. This can be considered a policy shift that has never been seen before.