An open letter to education minister Tatsuo Kawabata with regard to the Oct. 9 article "Education chief takes liberal path": Dear Sir, I heartily support your intention to make public high school in Japan free.

As one step toward reducing family costs at the high school level, I would like to draw to your attention that all public high schools in the greater Tokyo area have their entrance exams on the same day. This is a disaster for many students because if they make the mistake of challenging a better school and fail, their recourse is the private, fee-based schools that happily accept them. This is an unmitigated scam that the Tokyo public school system knowingly supports. Since private school placement interviews and tests are scheduled before those of public schools, many families are forced to pay entrance or pre-registration fees for private schools. If they don't and their kid fails the later public high school entrance exams, then the family is out of luck.

Since private high school fees plus required "donations" range from ¥2 million to ¥5 million for three years, failing their one gamble at entering public high school causes financial hardships to many families in the Tokyo area — and is a strong disincentive to have even one child.

In Osaka, as far as I understand, the public high schools are ranked and each rank has its entrance exams in a different week. This encourages students to challenge up. If they don't make it, they can take the exams of the next rank down later. Therefore, few, if any, students are forced to pay the high interview and pre-registration fees as well as the expensive tuition of private high schools against their wishes.

Mr. Minister, if your intention is to make public high school free and reduce the financial burden on the parents, then you must do something to change the system currently practiced in Tokyo as soon as possible.

g. jolley