TOKYO: A total of 8,601 foreign children of compulsory school age living in Japan were possibly not in education as of May last year, the education ministry said Thursday.

The number of such children, who are eligible for elementary and junior high school education, grew by 418 from a year before, according a ministry survey of the education boards of 1,741 municipalities across the country.

The ministry also said that 57,718 foreign students in elementary, junior high and high schools needed special Japanese language instruction.

The number of registered foreign residents of compulsory school age increased by 13,772 to 150,695, including 106,540 elementary school age children and 44,155 junior high school age children.

Of the foreign children, 970 were confirmed not to be in education, 7,199 could not be contacted, and 432 were not surveyed by education boards.

When the ministry first conducted such a survey in 2019, there were about 20,000 such foreign children. But the number has since been decreasing as education boards have been encouraging them to enroll in education.

The ministry believes that the latest increase can be attributed to an increase in the overall number of foreign children in Japan.

Meanwhile, the number of elementary, junior high and high school students needing special Japanese language instruction rose 21.2 percent from the previous survey in 2021 to 57,718 as of May 2023. Of the total, those speaking Portuguese and Chinese accounted for 20.8 percent and 20.6 percent, respectively.

JIJI Press