LBL(Layer-By-Layer) algorithms have been proposed to accelerate the training speed of MLPs(Multilayer Perceptrons). In this LBL algorithms, each layer needs a error function for optimization. Especially, error function for hidden layer has a great effect to achieve good performance. In this sense, this paper proposes a new hidden layer error function for improving the performance of LBL algorithm for MLPs. The hidden layer error function is derived from the mean squared error of output layer. Effectiveness of the proposed error function was demonstrated for a handwritten digit recognition and an isolated-word recognition tasks and very fast learning convergence was obtained.