Japanese school administrators wanted to give students more time to prepare for grueling college entrance exams when they secretly dropped some required courses from the curriculum.

Instead, they caused a scandal that has left 80,000 seniors without the right credits to graduate from high school, sparked a nationwide uproar against Japan's increasingly criticized schools and even drove one principal to suicide for failing to offer basic science classes for the past three years.

"The schools apparently had no qualms about violating the rules to bolster the pass rate in entrance exams or lying to cover their tracks," the Asahi newspaper said of the scandal.

The uproar hits at the heart of Japan's highly standardized education system, which is often criticized for advocating rote memorization and test performance over creativity and critical thinking.

From elementary school on up, pupils routinely pack cram schools where they relentlessly drill on the skills necessary to hurdle the make-or-break entrance exams.

"Exam Hell" is a national rite of passage. Many test-taking hopefuls flock to popular "pedagogy shrines" where they pray for passing grades and pay to take home specially blessed No 2 pencils.

Yet despite the focus on education, Japanese students have been slipping in international rankings of maths and reading skills. Now Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has made overhauling the whole system a top priority.

Perhaps no one was more shocked than the students when Japan's Education Ministry announced on Wednesday that 540 high schools nationwide, or 10 per cent of the total, had been secretly dropping some required courses to focus on entrance exams. Classes moved to the back burner include history and geography.

The findings affected 83,743, or 7.2 per cent, of all Japanese high school seniors, and initially triggered fears they wouldn't graduate.

Lawmakers and parents agreed that the students shouldn't bear the brunt of the responsibility for the shortfall, but with the spring graduation season coming up in March, there wasn't much room to make up for lost time.

After much hesitation, the Education Ministry yesterday unveiled a plan calling on students to take up to 70 makeup class sessions for each subject missed. They will have to take the classes after school or during winter or spring break, although principals have individual discretion to trim the makeup hours by up to a third.

Source: China Daily