As part of the government-proposed trilogy of reform, a review will be made of having the national treasury pay the costs of compulsory education. Present plans call for transferring some government revenues generated by the consumption tax and other sources to local autonomies and abolishing various school subsidies to them.
Local governments will then have authority to use the new revenues at their discretion, but the great disparity in the amount of consumption-tax revenues from region to region threatens to cause wide regional gaps in the levels of compulsory education.
The 1990s is often called the "lost generation." In my opinion, the most serious problem of the period was the deterioration in the quality of human resources, which no doubt contributed significantly to Japan's prolonged economic stagnation. To reverse the deterioration, high standards of compulsory education must be maintained and improved. This is even more important than improvements in higher education.