TOKYO - Japan's education ministry has drafted guidelines making a hybrid of paper and digital textbooks standard from the 2030 academic year, with digital content playing a supplemental role, sources familiar with the matter said Monday.
While digital textbooks will become formal teaching materials in that year, the draft bars fully digital textbooks for pupils in fourth grade or below and calls for a smaller proportion of digital content in hybrid textbooks than for older groups. The ministry will present the draft to an expert panel on Thursday.
From fifth grade onward, fully digital textbooks would be limited to certain subjects, including English and practical subjects such as music and art.
Textbooks will not include artificial intelligence features for the time being.
The emphasis on paper comes as some experts have raised concerns about the impact of digital textbooks on students' health and learning. The ministry will assess them and review the policy as needed.
Paper is currently the only official textbook format, while digital versions are treated as "alternative teaching materials." Existing digital textbooks reproduce the content of already screened paper textbooks and include text-to-speech functionality.
A legal revision in June allowed textbooks from fiscal 2030 in three formats -- paper, fully digital and a "hybrid" combination of paper and digital content. The new framework covers elementary, junior high and high school textbooks.
Under the ministry's proposed timetable, the new textbooks would be introduced at elementary schools in 2030 and junior high schools in 2031, then phased in at high schools from 2032, starting with first-year students.
Local education boards and the heads of national and private schools will choose which format to adopt. The guidelines are intended to help them and textbook publishers make decisions under the new system.
A ministry survey last year of education boards and others responsible for choosing textbooks found support for the hybrid format at 88.3 percent for elementary schools, 86.3 percent for junior high schools and 78.4 percent for high schools.
