日本的影子教育：聚焦髙中阶段的课外补习支出

Shadow Education in Japan: Juku and Yobiko at the High School Level

Private tutoring is common among Japanese students. After formal schooling， many Japanese students attend private cramming schools called juku， or private educational institutions focusing on students9 preparation for college entrance examinations called yobiko. Stevenson and Baker used the metaphor of shadow education to describe this group of educational activities outside formal schooling in Japan. These private schools have historically been regarded as symbols of extremely severe examination conditions and requirements. However，entrance examination conditions have changed over the last twenty years due to decreasing student numbers. This paper examines private expenditure on these non-formal educational activities at the senior high school level. 888 pairs of high school students and their mothers were randomly sampled nationwide. Since not all students attended private institutions， and the dependent variable is left-censored， tobit regression models were estimated. Results indicated that household income and the number of siblings significantly a£fect tutoring expenditure， independent of high school characteristics. Although the competitiveness of entrance examinations may be diminishing due to decreasing student numbers， access to private tuition remains unequal.