Japan’s flagging economy is depriving thousands of 16-year-olds of an education. Many parents can no longer afford school fees.

Compulsory education ends at 16 in Japan. All expenses including an average tuition fee of pound;600 a year and the cost of books then have to be met by parents.

The education ministry puts the average cost to parents of attending high school at just over 505,000 yen (pound;2,800) per student each year and junior high at around pound;2,450 including school meals.

With unemployment at an all-time high, up from 1 per cent in 1992 to 5.5 per cent now, and the end of the job-for-life culture, the authorities have been searching for answers to the problem of “recession” drop-outs.

“There are numerous reports on increasing failure of parents to meet expenses and tuition payments,” said Professor Michio Nitta, an education expert at Tokyo University. He said some principals had been criticised for suggesting students take part-time jobs to pay fees.

There are schemes designed to help struggling parents but many of these have been cut due to the downturn.

According to an education ministry survey, scholarship grants and loans from schools, foundations and other bodies fell 25 per cent to pound;360 million between 1995 and 1999.

There are state-sponsored scholarships for 5 per cent of pupils, but these are heavily oversubscribed.

Meanwhile, more children are losing parents to “recession suicide”. One Tokyo-based private scholarship group Ashinaga Ikuei Kai said in a recent report that, of the high school pupils it accepted for scholarships from April 2000 to May 2001, 144 had lost fathers to suicide - seven times more than for the same period in 1998-99. In nearly half of the cases unemployment or bankruptcy was the main reason for the suicide.

Schools have also been suffering since the start of the nation’s economic woes in the early 1990s when budgets were slashed. Although many schools are crumbling there is no money to refurbish them.

Funds for essential areas such as libraries have also been diverted to other projects due to budget shortfalls. Elementary and junior high schools are short of 66 million books. About 14 per cent of elementary schools have less than half of the books they need, while about 22 per cent of junior high schools face similar book shortages. On average, each school is 2,600 books short, the ministry said.