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Students from single-parent households struggling

posted on Monday, May 10, 2010 09:48 PM

Many senior high school students from single-parent households are forced to give up further education amid financial difficulties, but people have become unwilling to support them due apparently to the newly introduced tuition waiver at public high schools.

‘‘It was reported last fall that students collecting street donations for one-parent students were told by passersby that the donations would not be needed anymore under the tuition-free program,’’ said Toshihiko Kudo, an executive board member of Tokyo-based NPO Ashinaga.

Ashinaga, the Japanese translation of the American novel ‘‘Daddy Long Legs,’’ provides financial assistance to orphans and children of single-parent households.

‘‘We’ve also received such inquiries over the phone at our office’’ since the prime policy of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s government came up for debate, Kudo said.

The new law introduced at the start of the new academic year in April waives tuition fees at public senior high schools run by local governments, with the state compensating the governments for ensuing shortfalls in revenues.

Private schools are paid up to around 240,000 yen per student, while state-run schools and others that are considered equivalent to senior high schools also receive the aid.

Underlining Kudo’s comments, 121 people stopped providing donations to Ashinaga this spring, almost double from last year.

While it is unclear whether they excused themselves from being ‘‘Ashinaga-san’’ (Mr and Ms Long Legs) with the introduction of the free tuition, one of the former donors noted on the last payment slip, ‘‘I decided to quit as an Ashinaga-san as high school tuition is exempted. As a pensioner, I have to protect myself.’‘

If other former donors share the view, it is a misunderstanding, Kudo said.

As around 60% of Ashinaga scholarship high school students have already seen their tuition reduced or exempted under the existing system, ‘‘the new policy will not bring about much merit to them,’’ he said.

‘‘Other than tuition, I needed a lot of money to attend high school, such as for commuting and school excursions,’’ said Miki Matsutate, a 19-year-old sophomore at Nishogakusha University who has received the Ashinaga scholarship.

The annual educational costs other than tuition are estimated at around 400,000 yen for a public high school student, which are not covered with the new policy.

Tatsuya Higashi, a 20-year-old sophomore at Tokyo University of Science, also said while he was exempted from tuition fees at high school, ‘‘I still needed money for study materials and extra classes.’‘

‘‘Ordinary households could divert the exempted tuition to the expenditures for cram schools or home tutors, although poor students cannot benefit much from the free tuition,’’ Kudo said. ‘‘The blanket program may further expand educational gaps among students.’‘

The latest Ashinaga survey found that the college advancement rate for high school graduates receiving its aid stood at 41.2% this spring, 12.7 points lower than the national average.

It also showed among the scholarship recipients who sought jobs after graduating from high school that 33.1% said they decided to work ‘‘in order to support the family finances,’’ while 16.5% said they gave up advancing to higher education due to economic reasons.

Analyzing the figures, Ashinaga presumed almost 50% of the scholarship recipients abandoned their hopes for further education, such as college, because of financial difficulties.

As for single-mother families, their annual income stands at around 1.34 million yen, less than one-third that of ordinary households, according to Ashinaga. While 80% of single mothers are working, their employment status is unstable as some 60% of them are non-regular workers.

Matsutate, who lost her father when she was a third-grader, made an appeal regarding such circumstances involving single-parent students to those who came and went in crowded Shinjuku Station in Tokyo on a recent weekend, when she called for donations with other students.

‘‘I thought I had better work when I graduated from high school, but I can attend college now with the help of Ashinaga and other scholarships,’’ she said. Her sister, now a first-year student in high school, also receives financial support from Ashinaga.

As of the end of the last academic year on March 31, around 28,000 Ashinaga-sans support some 6,000 students from high school to graduate levels, with annual donations totaling about 2.24 billion yen.

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