JTU held the 104 Congress on March 13.

President Kato had the opening speech, "A student of junior high school put an end to his life in Hiroshima. His death casts criticism to us, teachers and education professionals. He had said "Teachers will not listen to me". We need to sincerely accept his words and pains.

It is clear that there is a limit for one person/teacher to fully understand individual children who have different backgrounds. We must intently watch them with colleagues and share information. Teachers and education professionals help each other to overcome shortcomings and stay with children whenever they need. There is no perfect human being, therefore our cooperation is necessary to create education that do not miss children’s signs. It is required for us to pursue cooperation as organizational theory and pedagogical one.

This tragedy of his suicide is inexcusable, but it is also true that Japanese teachers work longest among the OECD countries and they are exhausted without improving the teacher-student ratio. How we help children and teachers and education professionals, that is the mission of authorities and trade unions. Please consider on the JTU policies whether they are responsible for the mission.
I would like to extend my sincere condolences for the student.

JTU held "Assembly for Improvement of Scholarship" on March 5. We learned challenges surrounding the youth such as government policies on scholarship systems, widening gap of poverty, poor public finance for higher education, and advocated solving these challenges to citizens in front of big stations.

They say that borrowers of scholarship must take the responsibilities, but it is necessary to recognize that society as a whole grow the youth. Japanese young people face miserable situations that university fees are expensive but the government does not equip benefit type scholarship. Now that economic gaps are widening and educational gaps are serious, we support the youth who want to go to higher education to motivate our society. Increase of public finance for higher education, managing free education in stages, changing scholarship to benefit type and improvement of non-regular-employment-focused labor policies. They are the keys.

Let us intently watch children, walk ahead with hand in hand and create brighter future".

The 3-years strategies were adopted on ‘Toward education and school reform which respect children’s rights’, ‘Improvement of salary and scheme,’ ‘Shortening of working hours and achievement of work-life balance’ and ‘Safety of children.’ There were discussions on situations of children in the devastated areas by the East Japan Great Earthquake, effects on communities by integration of high schools, original scholarship system for children of economic disadvantaged families and others.

The election was held and Yasunaga Okamoto was elected as new President and Hideyuki Shimizu as new General Secretary.