Ministry to test students nationwide on their physical skills

The education ministry plans to start physical ability tests this fiscal year for all fifth-graders and second-year junior high school students across the nation, officials said.

But some education experts warn that not enough discussion has been conducted on the matter, and that the tests will be meaningless unless recommendations personalized for each child are produced from the collected data.

The tests would serve as the physical education equivalent of standardized annual academic tests that started in 2007.

The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology wants to use the results of the physical ability tests, which will cover about 2.4 million schoolchildren, to improve programs that will increase their dexterity and physical strength.

"We don't have an adequate grasp on the situation on a region-to-region basis," said Toshikazu Ishino, deputy director-general at the ministry's Sports and Youth Bureau. "By providing results for each child, we believe it will help parents and children have a better understanding of the current situation."

The government has earmarked about 335 million yen for the tests, which will comprise a skills portion conducted from April through July and a questionnaire that will be sent to children and schools on sports and lifestyles.

The physical portion will cover eight areas, including a 50-meter dash, grip-strength measurement, and standing broad jump.

The children's height and weight will be measured, and they will be asked about their sleeping hours and other habits, such as whether they eat breakfast every morning.

The government will release nationwide average scores, as well as averages for each prefecture and averages by size of municipality. The results will also be provided to the children, schools and municipalities.

Schools will be allowed to decide whether to administer the test.

About 60 to 70 percent of elementary schools and junior high schools across the nation conduct physical tests similar to the planned one. However, the government does not collect data from these tests.

Some critics have noted that while the nationwide academic test was carefully studied by a panel of experts before its introduction, the ministry consulted only seven experts, mainly university professors and elementary and junior high school principals, for the physical ability test.

No research was done on the situation overseas.

"If other factors, such as home environment, habits and whether the child participates in extracurricular sports, are taken into consideration and measures are customized to help each child, then the test may be meaningful," said Osamu Ebihara, professor of physical education at Yokohama National University.

"But when children are increasingly becoming polarized in terms of physical ability, it is meaningless to try to calculate averages as past tests have done," Ebihara said.(IHT/Asahi: April 3,2008)