Given the growing seriousness of this problem behavior by adolescents and the decline in community and family educational functions, MEXT drafted a “New Plan for Creating Spaces for Children” that asks families, communities and schools around the country to work as one to ensure “safe and secure activity spots for children” so that they can engage in sports, cultural and a wide range of other activities after classes and on holidays at schools with the cooperation of adults in the communities; this Plan went into effect in FY2004.

This Plan seeks to promote sound development in children by mobilizing the adults in communities to watch over children and to create spaces for children to engage in various activities.

More specifically, MEXT is urgently and systematically pursuing the program to promote “classrooms for children in local communities” that offer safe and secure experiential activities and community exchange activities available to all elementary and junior high students in a three-year plan (to be implemented at approximately 5,300 locations in FY2004). In addition to parallel efforts to enhance home education counseling systems and to provide learning opportunities, MEXT is developing support teams to help children become more self-reliant as a means of addressing problem behavior and truancy.

## (1) Implementing the Program to Promote “Classrooms for Children in Local Communities” Projects

## 1 ) Establishing steering councils at the prefectural level

Steering councils are being set up in every prefecture to consider approaches for creating spaces for children within the prefecture, to host workshops for coordinators, to carry out activities to heighten public awareness of the need to create spaces for children, to examine safety measures, and to verify and evaluate projects after implementation.

## 2 ) Developing the program to promote “classrooms for children in local communities” (see Column 3)

Activity spots for children to engage in activities safely and securely are being set up after classes, on weekends and during extended vacation periods using school grounds, classrooms and community halls, and adults in the community, retired teachers, university students, and persons from youth/social education organizations are being assigned as safety managers and activity advisors.

A variety of experiential activities are being arranged for

▲ Playing menko with community adults

elementary and junior high school students, including such traditional pastimes as soccer, baseball and other sports, reading, musical performance, taketonbo and menko, English conversation classes held by guest native speakers, and experiences in the community’s traditional culture. These activities are expected to prove very beneficial, offering children opportunities to interact not only with classmates from school

## Column

# Waku Waku Challenge Plaza (Katsushika Ward, Tokyo)

After classes and on Saturdays, summer vacation and other days that schools are not in session, children from different grades come together in school gymnasiums, school grounds, and special classrooms to play freely and to engage in sports and learning activities. Activities are held from the end of classes to 6:00 p.m. on weekdays, and from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on non-school days.

Persons from the community serve as child guidance supporters to instruct and watch over children, and they put their respective skills to use in teaching children sports such as badminton and dodgeball as well as handicrafts and English conversation.

▲ Children enjoying a game of go