＜Individual Papers＞ A Consideration to the Effect of the Ombudsman System on processes of the Educational Decision-making processes.

In recent years, educational reform aims to enhance the accountability of schools entirely.// Schools are expected both to fulfill their duty to school boards and to comply with demands of parents and neighborhood. However, most of the research on school accountability has never considered enough to the necessity of fulfilling schools’ duty to school board.// To enhance the accountability of schools, it seems to be necessary for educational decision-making by school boards to comply with demands of parents and neighborhood. Because, in Japan, schools’ decision-making is defined by school boards to a respectable degree.// It seems to be important to examine the system to complement democratic administrative activities and policy-making. So I focus attention to the capability of the ombudsman.// In this paper, I investigate how the ombudsman system in local government contributes to democratic decision-making processes in school education