TOKYO -- A record 1,319 teachers at public elementary, junior high and high schools in Japan left their jobs because of mental illness in fiscal 2024. The education ministry showed this in a survey on July 22.

Read the full English article

Read the original Japanese article

This number was about 1.4 times higher than in the last survey three years before. It also went over 1,000 for the first time.

The ministry has tried to change teachers' work style. But the new results showed again that people cannot yet clearly see good results.

The numbers came in an interim report for the academic 2025 School Teachers Survey, with data from the 2024 school year. The survey is done every three years. It looks at full-time teachers, including their number, age and people who left their jobs.

The number of teachers who left because of mental illness has kept going up. It was 599 in the academic 2010 survey. That was the first time this item was added to the survey. In the previous survey in academic 2022, the number rose to 950. In the latest survey, it went over 1,000. That is more than double the number from 15 years ago.

A person from the ministry said it was hard to say one reason for this trend. But they said possible reasons are the many different needs of students, relationships with other workers and more office work.

By school type, the number at public elementary schools went up by 232 to 801. At public junior high schools, it rose by 88 to 365. At public high schools, it rose by 49 to 153. All of these were record highs.

(Japanese original by Buntaro Saito, Tokyo City News Department)

Vocabulary

mental illness: a sickness of the mind

interim: for now, before the final one

trend: the way something is changing