Toward the new millennium, the term ‘global human capital’ started to appear in business and government documents in Japan. The Ministry of Education (MOE, from 2001, then Culture, Sports, Science and Technology: MEXT) organized an expert meeting on reform in English teaching in 2001 and announced the strategic structure to cultivate ‘Japanese with English Abilities’ in 2002, which was published officially as “Action Plan to Cultivate ‘Japanese with English Abilities’” (MEXT, 2001, 2002; Kawai, 2009; Tanaka, 2017) and began implementation the following year. In the plan, it states the need for educating Japanese children for ‘communication ability in English’ and strengthening language competency in their mother tongue. From 2020, finally, English was introduced as a subject at primary schools for Years 5 and 6. Much of the content covered in upper-secondary school will be passed down to lower-secondary from 2021 onward (MEXT 2017). The local governments can interpret the curriculum to suit their own environment and the needs from the people within their resources. The shift from knowledge-based curriculum to practical communication-centered curriculum in foreign languages education was evident in the series of CSs after 2002 under the main theme “Zest for Life” (MEXT 2017; Oka, 2011). Since ‘communication’ component has been stressed, some local governments together with the Board of Education introduced online English communication with native speakers within the school curriculum. The class is a collaboration with a company and the extra budget is designated from the local government. This could be a Japanese model of New Education Privatization (NEP) for learning English as a foreign language. However, what factors are driving this NEP and how it has been purchased and implemented by schools in collaboration with the private companies has not attracted due attention. Drawing on data from curriculum policy documents and interviews with two officers-in-charge responsible for introducing the English online communication class at the lower secondary level schools in Tokyo metropolitan, this presentation focuses on how the NEP in teaching and learning English communication online relates to the issues of equality and equity in the public education system. The initial analysis revealed that Japan government’s internationalization efforts, and development of human capital characterized by “Japanese with English ability” contributed to the emergence of private sector involvement in English education. However, with additional data, other locally embedded factors driving this initiative will be presented suggesting some educational implications.

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