More Parents in Japan Calling for Digitization of School Information

Education Society Technology May 11, 2023

While digitization is becoming more common in some aspects of Japanese society, many schools still provide large amounts of information to parents in paper form.

English
日本語
简体字
繁體字
Français
Español
العربية
Русский

Every day children in Japan bring home all sorts notices from their schools, such as information on events such as field trips or open classes, surveys on vaccinations, or instructions on materials needed for arts and crafts projects.

Adobe Japan surveyed 500 parents or guardians with children attending nursery, kindergarten, or elementary school to find out their thoughts on whether digital communication with schools should be implemented. The results show that 74.6% of respondents either said that such communication “should be implemented” or “probably should be implemented.”

When asked about what school communications have been digitized and what items should be digitized, the top three items listed by respondents were notifications of absence or tardiness, notices and newsletters, and school lunch menu lists.

In the case of documents requiring a signature or seal, there was a large gap between the percentage who said they had already been digitized (11.0%) and those who wanted such documents to be digitized (32.8%), indicating the level of desire that there will be increased use of digitization in the future.

Among the respondents, 34.5% managed information digitally by either scanning paper materials children received from school or taking photos of them to save on a smartphone or other device. This is an increase of 12.5 percentage points compared to the results of the 2019 survey.

education school