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This longitudinal study analyzes the effects of introducing "Informatics I" into Japan's Common Test for University Admissions, utilizing data from a questionnaire administered to first-year students at the University of Tokyo from 2006 to 2026. The research reveals that while the 2013 curriculum reform did not significantly alter students' perceptions of their information-related skills, the new entrance examination in 2025 led to a notable shift in how students assess their understanding of computer science topics. This shift indicates a change in evaluative criteria rather than an actual increase in proficiency, highlighting the potential distortions caused by high-stakes assessments in informatics education.
The introduction of "Informatics I" drastically altered students' self-assessments of their computer science knowledge, revealing a concerning shift in evaluation criteria rather than genuine skill acquisition.
Despite the recent intensive development of secondary education curricula and assessments in informatics, the impact of assessments has not been well studied in this field. Since informatics education covers a diverse range of content, from computer science knowledge to ICT skills, careful consideration is needed to prevent assessments from distorting education. This study investigates the impact of introducing ``Informatics I''into the Common Test for University Admissions in Japan, as an example of a large-scale, standardized, high-stakes assessment in 2025. As the data source for this analysis, this study uses a questionnaire that has been administered every year from 2006 to 2026 to all first-year students at the University of Tokyo. The questionnaire asks students for their self-perceptions of the information-related knowledge and skills they studied and acquired in high school. Using these data, we conduct a longitudinal study of the 2013 curriculum reform, the 2022 reform, and the introduction of the new entrance examination. We attempt to isolate the impact of the entrance examination through two comparisons: between the 2013 curriculum reform and the 2022 reform; and between direct-entry and gap-year students among those entering in 2025, who followed different curricula but took the new examination. We use the theoretical framework of the washback effect as a lens for interpreting these differences. We found that (1) the 2013 curriculum reform produced no discontinuity in students'perceptions, whereas (2) the introduction of the new entrance examination in 2025 produced a sharp change, particularly in the proportion of students reporting acquisition of computer-science topics; and (3) this change is too large to be interpreted as a gain in proficiency, and is better understood as a shift in students'criteria for judging acquisition.