This past weekend, approximately 1.5 thousand Brazilians who are temporarily employed in Japan took fundamental and secondary school equivalence exams, which were administered in the provinces of Gunma, Kanagawa, Mie, and Shizuoka.
According to the Ministry of Education, of the 1,577 people enrolled, 502 took exams at the fundamental school level, and 1,075, at the secondary school level.
The exams, which have been offered for the last six years by the Ministries of Education and Foreign Relations, in partnership with the Paraná State Secretariat of Education, are intended to encourage Brazilians to study while they are in Japan.
The idea is to prepare the Dekaseguis so that, when they return to Brazil, they are prepared to take professional, technological, or university courses.
Dekaseguis or Dekasegis are children of Japanese who have gone back temporarily to Japan on a working visa. Most of them come from Brazil, but there are also Peruvian and American Dekaseguis.
Japan has the third largest Brazilian community abroad, exceeded only by the United States and Paraguay.
There are currently around 240 thousand Brazilians temporarily employed in Japan; approximately 40 thousand of them are of school age.
To satisfy the requests of Brazilian workers in Japan, the Brazilian government set up a pilot project in 1999 with the Paraná State Secretariat of Education to offer equivalence exams.
Agência Brasil
Translator: David Silberstein