170 high schools offer insufficient curriculum

The number of high schools that have not provided students with all compulsory subjects has reached about 170 in 29 prefectures, affecting thousands of students, a Kyodo News poll showed Thursday. Mostly elite high schools with many graduates going to high-ranking universities, the schools have reportedly claimed they omitted some items deemed unnecessary to focus on subjects required for college entrance examinations.

While the education ministry's curriculum guideline requires that high school students take world history plus either a Japanese history or a geography course, only one of the three subjects is necessary to sit for the national university entrance examination, which most public universities use as a preliminary test.