Hello everyone! Just thinking about my options for the future and that might include starting a family here but I really want to know from other parents experiences (especially parents from the UK) what are the main differences between schooling/education in Japan compared to the UK.
Thankyou!
4 comments
I am British and have two kids in the Japanese school system right now.
The main difference is that Japanese education is based off of the US model (elementary>junior high>highschool.
The other massive difference is the expectation that your kids do some kind of after school education or clubs. I remember growing up in the UK and school finished at 3pm and after that I was free to hangout with friends and get up to no good. Well here, kids will go to sports clubs or cram school until it’s time to head home for dinner.
A lot of foreigners will complain about the Japanese school system in japan saying that it’s intense and kids are over worked. I would disagree completely.
You ask any kid, especially junior high to highschool age and they’ll tell you that they love all the extra curriculum because it gives them the opportunity to spend more time with their friends. And let’s be honest for a sec here. What else would they be doing if not for the extra curriculum? If you say they’d be outside learning about nature or whatever, you’d be dead wrong about this generation of kids. They play videos games, which is nothing wrong but I’d prefer my kids to be in some sports team, art club, music club, or even just studying to get good grades.
The Japanese system has its floors for sure but it’s a whole lot better than what I grew up with.
British state secondary schools (at least when I was a kid) encourage you to think outside the box and challenge opinions when you disagree. I.e they try to encourage independent thought. Hence why a lot of UK exams or essay based questions and consider course work and class performance too.
Japanese state junior high schools (from my experience teaching in them when I was an ALT) they suppress Independent thought and try to make multiple choice (where you can still get a question correct by luck) test passing robots. That will conform to Japanese society rules (where they don’t question anything). They don’t even learn about the details of Japan’s war crimes either.
The constant homework in elementary school has surprised me. Homework and reading out loud every night, homework and diary on a weekend, and homework plus special assignments on holidays. Maybe it is like that in the UK now but I don’t remember doing that much.
If you can afford it, I’d do Japanese schools for elementary and maybe junior high, but international school for at least high school. Most Japanese schools don’t teach students to think independently or problem solve. The only important thing is to find the correct answer.