On March 31, 2022, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) issued a Notice of the Plan for the Capacity Development, Recruitment, and Training of Teachers for Special Needs Education (No. 2668) to superintendents of prefectural boards of education, designated cities, and core cities.

This Notice requests boards of education to take concrete measures to implement the contents of the report compiled on March 31, 2022 by the Study Council on the Modality of Training Teachers Responsible for Special Needs Education.

Specifically, the report requests each board of education to devise measures, such as:

• Give advantages to those with experience in special needs education at the teacher recruitment stage (by giving extra points in the recruitment examination, etc.),
• Take measures so that all newly recruited teaching staff will have multiple years of experience in special needs education within approximately ten years
• Consider the experience acquired in special needs education when appointing to managerial positions and such
• Make continued efforts to achieve a 100% license holding rate for teachers of schools for special needs education.
• Promote efforts to enable those who wish to become teachers to systematically obtain the five disability areas covered in the license by cooperating with universities utilizing remote media systems and the like in the 5 regional blocks of Japan.

For more information, please visit the website below (Japanese only):
Report of the Study Council on the Training of Teachers for Special Needs Education：
https://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/shingi/chousa/shotou/173/index.html
Notice：https://www.mext.go.jp/content/20220331-mxt_tokubetu01-000021707_5.pdf