Elementary School Entrance Exam in Japan
This article talks about the crazy movement of entrance exam for elementary schools in Japan.
Taking an elementary school exam means receiving an examination for admission to a national or private elementary school. The contents of examinations are diverse because they are set individually for each school, and they do not have a certain format like junior high school exams.
It is necessary for the school side to expand the school door to a wide range from the sense of crisis for declining birthrate, and combined with the enthusiasm of parents wishing to learn children in a little better environment, in the elementary schools in some metropolitan areas and Kansai area, the exam is not an unusual sight. Particularly in Shibuya-ku, Chiyoda-ku and Bunkyo-ku where examinations are popular, there are some areas where more than 40% of the school children go on to small private schools.
The contents of the entrance examination are roughly divided into interviews, paper tests, and others.
Interview
Most schools impose interviews, and are considered to have a significant impact on examination results. The interview target varies depending on the school, but there are many cases in which one or two patterns are selected from among parents and children, parents only and children only. Points that can not be determined by the paper test alone, that is, “willingness to motivate”, “family education policy”, “child's personality”, etc., are checked.
Paper test
Although the most common method of examination, there are quite a few schools that do not impose paper tests.
Since it is assumed that preschool children can not read or write hiragana or numbers, there is no problem with the paper to be distributed, but only pictures, figures, figures, etc. are printed. The questions will be given in the form of mainly symbols are used for answers. Typical subject areas include "number", "figure", "language", "memory", "reasoning", "scientific common sense", "daily common sense" and "social common sense".
