The high level of academic abilities in East Asia draws attention from overseas countries. The overview of the current status of students' academic abilities in Japan was provided here in four perspectives: the level of academic ability, the disparity in academic abilities, the quality and structure of academic ability and the motivation for learning. Level of academic ability is based on measurable academic ability and calculated by yielding the average of groups in a survey on academic performance. When a decline in academic ability becomes an issue, it mainly means that it is an issue regarding the deterioration of academic standards. The disparity in academic abilities is, just as the name implies, a viewpoint to see how the academic abilities of children are distributed. With the academic ability issues in Japan, it was an IEA study that insisted on the importance and underlying problems of the students' motivation for learning.