OECD Home › Directorate for Education and Skills › Preschool and school › OECD-Tohoku School
Background
On 11 March 2011, an earthquake of a magnitude of 9 hit the northeast part, the Tohoku Region, of Japan. It was the strongest ever recorded in Japan and triggered the country’s worst disaster of the post-war era. The earthquake was followed by massive tsunamis and the nuclear power disaster. There was an enormous loss of life and many people were affected by this tragedy.
The Secretary General of the OECD, Mr. Angel Gurría, visited Japan about one month after the Great East Japan Earthquake, and he expressed the OECD’s commitment to support Japan's recovery/reconstruction efforts. Since then, the Directorate for Education has continuously provided support in various ways, including launching the OECD/Tohoku School towards "creative recovery" in close collaboration with the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), Fukushima University and other key local stakeholders from the affected regions.
The OECD places a high value on student motivation, curiosity and creativity. The Tohoku School takes a project-based learning approach, which is found to be a great motivator.
The mission of the project assigned to the students in the Tohoku School is:
The students carrying out this assigned project are given real-life tasks to perform to accomplish their mission, and in doing so, they will accumulate aspirations and learn such skills as initiative taking, leadership, critical thinking, co-operation and negotiation. We call these the key competencies for the 21st century .
Video messages from the launch of the
OECD-Tohoku School on 26 March 2012
|
Mr. Motohide Yoshikawa, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, Permanent Representative, Permanent Delegation of Japan to the OECD |
||
|
Mr. Angel Gurría, Secretary General, OECD |
||
|
Dr. Barbara Ischinger, Director for Education, OECD |
||
|
Mr. Christian Masset, Ambassador of France to Japan |
||
|
Japanese students from the Japanese School in Paris, France |
||
|
The snapshot of the activities of the First Workshop of the OECD Tohoku School (in Japanese) Footnote: Edited by Mr Taisei Nagi and filmed by Mr Yamada (TV-man Union)
|
Press
OECD launches creative education project to help revitalise Japan's Tohoku region
26/03/2012 - The OECD has launched an initiative with the Japanese Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, Fukushima University and local schools for students in the Tohoku region to create and organise an event that will showcase the country’s recovery from the 2011 Great East Japan earthquake
Launch event: Intensive Workshop #1, 26-30 March 2012, Iwaki, Japan
Launch event: Intensive Workshop #2, 31 July-4 August 2012, Iwaki, Japan
Upcoming events
Background and context
Advisory Board members
Empowerment partners
Collaborating organisations
Related links
Contact
-- Permanent URL http://www.oecd.org/edu/tohoku. --
Follow us
E-mail Alerts Blogs