Japanese City To Use Robots To Tackle Rise In Students' Absence From School

The idea of having someone else attend school in your place might be attractive to children who have a dislike for school. However, a Japanese city is planning to implement this concept with the intention of encouraging students to return to physical school attendance.

According to the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper, Kumamoto, a city in southwest Japan, is planning to use robots to facilitate virtual attendance for students, addressing rising truancy rates attributed to issues such as anxiety and bullying.

Robots equipped with microphones, speakers, and cameras will enable two-way communication and are scheduled to be introduced into classrooms in November.

The Kumamoto Municipal Board of Education has said that this type of initiative is rare nationwide. The aim is to reduce anxiety for absentee children planning to return to the classroom.

Children will be able to use devices at home to remotely manoeuvre robots that represent them at school, allowing them to take part in classes and discussions with schoolmates, the southern city of Kumamoto said.

Like other countries, Japan has seen a rise in children not attending school following the Covid-19 pandemic, with reasons for being absent ranging from difficulty fitting in to bullying, according to a government probe.

The one-metre (three-foot) tall robots will be self-propelling, with pupils able to move them within the school grounds and even participate in events, reports said.

"Communicating through these robots is not completely real-life, but it can at least give a certain sense of reality to kids who are still unsure and afraid of interacting with others," Maki Yoshizato, a Kumamoto city official said.

"We hope this undertaking will help alleviate their psychological fears." 

Across Japan, the number of truant pupils at the elementary and middle school levels hit an all-time high of 244,940 in fiscal year 2021, according to the latest education ministry survey.

The robots initiative, which Kumamoto hopes to roll out as early as November, pending budget approval, comes after the tech-savvy city launched virtual classrooms in the "metaverse" to tackle truancy.

"It is extremely important to give pupils unable to go to school more options to study," Kumamoto Mayor Kazufumi Onishi told reporters last month.

(With inputs from AFP)