Language the way to top future at Murray Farm Public School

CHILDREN will bid konnichiwa to new lessons as Murray Farm Public School joins the Bilingual Schools Program next year.

The Carlingford school is one of four state primary schools that will learn an Asian language in the first bilingual classes.

Principal Colin Booth said kindergarten and year 1 students will study Japanese for 90 minutes a day.

Rouse Hill, Scotts Head and Campsie public schools will also participate in the $2.5 million, four-year program.

“I am really excited about this program for the school as I have seen my own daughter learn another language in high school and it has benefited her in life, especially in the workplace,” Mr Booth said.

“Teaching our students from an early age gives them the scaffolding to learn another language more easily.

“Looking at our local high schools like Muirfield High and Cherrybrook Technology High School and the fact they have Japanese as their major language, was one of the main reason why our school was also selected.”

Mr Booth said the school had a 72 per cent non-English speaking background with Chinese, Korean and Indonesian the three predominant languages spoken there.

“As part of the selection process we had to choose a non-community language which is why Japanese is such a good language for our school,” he said.

“By the time our students finish year 6 they should be fluent in three languages - their home language, English and Japanese.”

Mr Booth said it was planned to expand Japanese to all grades।

http://hills-shire-times.whereilive.com.au/news/story/language-the-way-to-top-future/

Universities may be forced to give applicants key statistics

All universities likely will be required to provide prospective tertiary students with certain key statistics, such as dropout and employment rates, according to a draft plan for a review of university establishment standards drawn up by the Education, Science and Technology Ministry. On Thursday, the ministry submitted the draft to a university section meeting of the Central Council for Education, an advisory panel to the education minister, for deliberation.

The proposed changes aim to ensure students taking entrance exams receive key information about the national, public and private university of their choice. The draft lists 17 items of information across five fields that universities would be required to disclose.

The standards likely will be revised after the proposed changes are examined further this fiscal year.

The list is divided into five fields the ministry thinks universities should focus on to promote high educational standards: education, students, organization, economic framework and learning environment.

Information pertaining to students would include the dropout rate, which is an indicator of the difficulty of gaining the marks needed to proceed to the next year of study and how many students attend a university without a real intention of completing courses, such as those who failed to gain admittance to their first-choice university।

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20091108TDY03303.htm

Pasona starts full-scale service helping students find jobs

Major staffing agency Pasona Group, Inc. has begun a full-scale service for universities nationwide, especially those located outside major metropolitan areas, to support students' job-hunting efforts.

The firm will provide services previously not provided by university job placement offices, such as teaching female students makeup techniques to impress recruiters.

Students of universities that signed contracts with Pasona will be able to use offices established by the company in Omotesando, Tokyo, and Umeda, Osaka, without charge. Pasona will provide recruitment information and conduct training programs, such as mock interviews, at the facilities. Pasona says the offices will function as additional employment bureaus of the universities.

In July, Pasona began providing job-hunting services on an experimental basis to students of Meiji Gakuin University in Tokyo and Bunri University of Hospitality in Saitama Prefecture. Since then, Pasona had been receiving numerous inquiries from local universities that offer little of recruitment information and have other student job-placement handicaps compared with universities in Tokyo and Osaka.

According to Pasona, students of such local universities are having difficulty following up and collecting the latest job information after visiting Tokyo for job-hunting, because their institutions do not have a base in Tokyo or adjacent prefectures. The positive response from local universities prompted Pasona to offer the service nationwide.

Pasona's recruitment services contracts cost 500,000 yen to 900,000 yen per month and are renewable yearly. Beginning with the prefectural University of Shimane in Hamada, Shimane Prefecture, the company plans to conclude contracts with about 50 universities to be able to support students through the upcoming spring recruitment season.

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/business/20091102TDY07310.htm

FOCUS: Animation, job hunting drive popularity of Japanese-language study

Japanese-language study is growing in popularity every year, especially in East Asian countries, driven by the interest in Japanese animation and the desire to find better jobs in Japan.

According to a 2006 survey by the Japan Foundation, Japanese-language education was carried out in 133 countries and territories throughout the world, and Japanese-language learners numbered about 2.98 million, up 26.4 percent over three years before.

Since 1984, when the foundation started the Japanese-language proficiency test for non-native speakers, the number of examinees has been increasing year after year. At first, the number was 7,000, but it reached some 560,000 in 2008, half of them being Chinese and 20 percent being South Koreans.

An official at ALC Press Inc., a Tokyo publisher of Japanese-language learning materials, said, ''Japanese enterprises contracting out data input and other jobs to China are increasing in light of inexpensive labor costs, and even limited Japanese-language skills can become an advantage at the workplace.''

Andi Lukito, 24, from Indonesia, decided to study in Japan because he liked such Japanese animated cartoons as ''Sazae-san'' and ''Doraemon'' when he was a junior high school student.

An education ministry official said, ''The popularity of Japan's pop culture, such as comics and animation, is contributing to increases in the number of Japanese-language learners.''

However, foreign university students in Japan account only for 3.3 percent of the total, compared with 25 percent in Britain and Australia, and 10 percent in Germany and France.

The Chinese and South Korean governments have been making strenuous efforts in other Asian countries to increase the number of learners of their languages. The Japanese government has been trying to do the same, but has not been as successful.

At present, there are 120,000 international students in Japan, and the government is trying to boost the number to 300,000 in 2020.

A major bottleneck for foreign students in Japan is career options after graduation. Of the total, 56 percent hope to work in Japan, but actually, only 29 percent, or 9,411, could find jobs in the country.

Many foreign students want to be employed by such famous enterprises as Sony Corp. and Toyota Motor Corp., but more than 90 percent of them have actually been employed by mid- and small-sized companies.

Some companies are turning their eyes to foreign students, though Lukito was recruited in April by Lawson Inc., a major convenience store chain operator, as a full-time employee.

The company started actively recruiting foreign students in 2008, and of 122 university graduates recruited in 2009, there were 39 from other Asian countries.

A Lawson public relations official said, ''In the convenience store industry, the advantage is how many people with new ideas there are.''

Fujitsu Ltd., a major computer manufacturer, hired some 50 non-Japanese as regular employees this year, accounting for 10 percent of new permanent employees. ''Japanese students are decreasing amid the falling birthrate and there is no need to limit ourselves only to Japanese to secure excellent personnel,'' a Fujitsu official said.
==Kyodo

http://home.kyodo.co.jp/modules/fstStory/index.php?storyid=468393