With shortages of elementary and secondary school teachers deepening in Japan, the government is moving to cut the time needed to earn a teaching license at graduate school from about three years to one. The aim is to secure teaching staff by opening the classroom to working professionals and others who did not major in education.
The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology plans to create a new graduate program allowing people who have not completed teacher training courses to obtain a license within one year, according to multiple Japanese media outlets on the 25th.
Under the current system, earning a teaching license at graduate school requires completing 56 to 57 credits over three years. The new program would shorten that period by crediting 20 units based on work experience. Candidates will be selected by individual universities and regional boards of education, and the government plans to revise the relevant law at next year's ordinary session of parliament, with the aim of introducing the system before 2030.
For about six months of the training period, participants would work in schools and receive a salary, easing the financial burden of switching careers to teaching. The ministry is also considering tuition support for candidates who meet certain requirements.
Long Hours, Lowest Satisfaction
Japan is taking such an unusual step because staffing shortfalls at schools have reached a serious level. According to the ministry, public elementary, middle and high schools and special-needs schools nationwide were short 4,317 teachers as of the start of the school year last April.
Declining interest in the profession is cited as a major cause. Teachers hired in large numbers during the 1980s are reaching retirement age one after another, and vacancies are opening up because of maternity and sick leave, yet recruiting new staff is becoming increasingly difficult. Amid a broader labor shortage, university graduates are also favoring jobs at private companies over schools.
The perception that rewards do not match long working hours is driving candidates away from teaching in particular. Japanese teachers work an average of 50.4 hours a week, longer than the 44.1-hour average for Japanese workers with a university degree or higher, according to NHK and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's Education at a Glance 2026 report.
Adjusted for purchasing power parity, the average annual salary for a Japanese middle school teacher was about $43,000 (about 58 million won), below the OECD average of $49,000. Only 28.6% of Japanese teachers said they were satisfied with their pay, compared with the OECD average of 38.7%. Just 37.3% said they were satisfied with working conditions other than pay, the lowest among member countries.
Erasing Student Debt in a Push to Make Teaching Attractive
Along with lowering the bar for a teaching license, the Japanese government is strengthening financial incentives for the profession. The education ministry is considering waiving or reducing repayment obligations on state-funded scholarships for teachers working at national, public and private elementary, middle and high schools.
Scholarships in Japan are divided into grants, which do not have to be repaid, and loans, which must be paid back after a recipient finds work. The government is weighing waiving a set amount or the full balance depending on how many years a teacher has served. Whether the benefit would extend to current teachers or apply only to new hires requires further discussion.
Such a system has been in place before. Japan introduced a scholarship repayment waiver for teachers in the 1950s to address a shortage, but scrapped it in fiscal 1999 after teacher supply stabilized and questions were raised about fairness relative to other occupations. Now it is being considered again as an incentive to teach. How to secure funding on the scale of tens of billions of yen, however, remains a challenge.
Whether lowering the barriers to entry will actually ease the staffing shortage is another question. Teachers who moved into the profession from other careers accounted for 0.9% of all teachers in Japan as of 2024, far below the OECD member average of 8.4%, according to the organization.
Why Teachers Are Packing Up: "Go on a Field Trip and Face Criminal Charges?"
School trips and field programs at elementary and secondary schools are disappearing.
The number of elementary schools running overnight field programs has fallen by more than 700 in two years, leaving a participation rate of 47.8%, and the figure is below 10% in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province.
The biggest reason is the legal liability and complaint burden borne by supervising teachers. Since a teacher faced criminal charges over a 2022 accident in Sokcho, 96.2% of teachers say they feel burdened by field programs.
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