The government on the 3rd signaled cuts of 2,269 elementary school teachers and 1,458 secondary school teachers, citing a decline in the school-age population due to low births. Since 2023, the government has carried out reductions by not filling vacancies left by retirees and by hiring fewer new teachers than in previous years.
Teachers' groups and the education sector are pushing back. They say the number of students has fallen, but teachers' workloads have increased. A rise in multicultural students and students falling short of basic academic standards is also cited as a burden. Some warn that cutting teachers without sufficient review could repeat Japan's mistakes.
◇ Japan once cut teacher positions… now a "teacher-shortage nation"
The biggest concern in Japan's education sector is the "teacher shortage." With too few regular teachers, principals and vice principals are writing student records or taking homeroom duties. Some cases have seen teachers of other subjects cover classes because schools could not find replacements for those on childcare leave. At the root is a policy of reducing teacher numbers due to low births.
As low births worsened in the late 1980s, the Japanese government slowed the pace of increasing teacher numbers. In the 2000s, it began cutting new hires of regular teachers. Schools with fewer students were merged or closed, and vacancies left by regular teachers were filled with temporary or nonregular teachers.
The problem intensified in the 2010s. Mass retirements of baby boomer teachers increased the workload on those who remained. On top of that, excessive complaints from parents so severe they were called "monster parents," long overtime hours, and poor treatment deepened the aversion to the profession.
According to a 2022 announcement by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, shortages were found in Japan's elementary, middle, and high schools. Many schools reported teacher shortages, including 13.1% of special education schools, 7% of middle schools, 4.9% of elementary schools, and 4.8% of high schools.
◇ Belated measures rolled out… still not enough to stop teacher shortages
The Japanese government has belatedly moved to address the shortage. It scrapped the teacher license renewal system to lower the barrier to entry. Some local governments allow college juniors to take the hiring exam and exempt the first round if a retired teacher returns within 10 years, while also opening the exam to people without teacher certification.
But the situation is not improving. The acceptance ratio for public elementary school teachers in Japan fell from 12.5-to-1 in 2000 to 2.9-to-1 in 2025. Although the number hired was the highest since 1986, applicants decreased, pushing the ratio to a record low.
Starting this year, Japan will raise the fixed allowance paid to teachers in place of overtime pay. It will also implement a policy to cut average monthly extra work hours by 30%. Beginning in April, it plans a pilot program to manage lists of cram school instructors, retired teachers, and office workers who have teaching certificates but are not in education, and to dispatch them to public schools. Whether these measures will solve the problem remains uncertain.
There are growing calls in Korea for careful discussion on teacher reductions to avoid becoming like Japan. Song Gwan-cheol, a research fellow at the Korea Labor and Society Institute, said, "With weekly teaching hours for teachers increasing and a higher share of nonregular hires due to teacher departures, if the number of new teachers is mechanically reduced, we could repeat Japan's mistakes," adding, "When drafting teacher supply plans, it is necessary to reflect 'teaching hours,' not just 'student numbers.'"