For those of you who have received the special license and are teaching in Public schools, how do you like it? What’s your experience like?

8 comments

1. At any given time in Japan there’s probably only about 1,000 people currently here and working that have the 特別免許状 (lit. special license) which is essentially a full license to be a teacher in the same capacity as a Japanese person in the assigned prefecture. So you might not find someone here who currently has one and is also in public school with it.

   From the experiences I’ve heard about, you get treated a lot closer to what a “normal” teacher gets treated like. The pay is usually better with bonuses and a bit higher base rate, but the work life balance goes out the window and your list of responsibilities quadruples. If your Japanese is native like, you will likely have to have a home room and be a tanin, attend events, attend meetings, arrange meetings with parents, do college counseling if it’s high school, probably sit on various committees for testing and entrance exams, advise for a club, etc.

2. I have a temporary Japanese teaching license and teach at a private school. What do you want to know?

3. I know 9 people including myself who have special licenses in my prefecture. 4 of them are at public schools and the rest at private. I’m also in the private camp. Based on that small sample size, and speaking purely anecdotally, private school seems to be the better deal of the two in terms of workload. Every public school teacher I know with the special license has been a HR teacher, and one was even made head of the English department. None of them have much free time and all of them complain about it a lot on social media. In comparison, none of the private school teachers I know have been HR teachers yet. We all could be, but I think our schools realize our talents lie elsewhere. In my case, I’m the head of the international affairs division in my school, so I arrange everything with our sister schools. Needless to say that part of my job has been easy the last few years, as it’s been reduced to organizing skype events and online speech contests and the like.

   When I first started at my current school, I was in the recruiting department as well, which had me working 60 hours a week because of the constant stream of events like open campuses and things like that. I asked not to part of that department anymore because it was eating up all my weekend time and negatively affecting my relationship with my son. My school obliged, and it’s been 40 hour weeks ever since.

4. Was offered a chance to apply for a public school one. It was a guaranteed until retirement with pay raise exactly in line with other Japanese teachers. Asked a Japanese teacher about workload. Was advised to not even thinking of applying, as the workload gets increased by a factor of 10. Decided that I’d rather remain as a stress free direct-hire ALT.

5. I have a special license and teach at a private high school. I helped my friend get one and he teaches at a public school. He was asking me about my work/life balance and complaining that he was given a lot of responsibilities. I think he is doing alright now, but it sounds like my job is a bit more relaxed for the same compensation

6. Last year I worked at a public school and I had provisional but worked in many who had special license I also have a few friends who got it in other prefectures around me. I would say generally it was pretty mixed but a lot busier than any contract job, mostly related to extra duties. The teaching was not too different from what I did as an ALT, though I normally ran most classes anyways.

   It is really rewording working with the kids, you feel like you have a greater impact. Though I found things more restrictive because you are a lot more part of the educational system. This creates a lot of peer pressure to perform in certain ways. The duties do really pile up, less so for me but especially for the life time contract teachers. These are also not normally duties which can be half assed either. I worked with one person and the got hired for the next year as lifetime and the moment that changed duties just tripled. That said some were able to keep a decent enough work life balance. I would say be efficient with your work and keep your commute short and it won’t be too bad.

7. I’m at a private high school in the Tokai area, and have had mine for 13 years now. When I got it, it was still extremely rare for foreigners. Most of the special licenses given at that time were for school nurses or for Japanese whose work experience merited it.

   Glad to hear that they are getting more common for foreign teachers. At my school, we teach Eigo Hyogen (traditionally the 2 hour a week “grammar” class) to the higher level kids and it is really quite rewarding.

8. I have had the special licence for 8 years or so now at my private school.

   What changed? I taught some of my classes solo – that’s basically it.
   I teach the same course every year so not so much prep is ever really needed.
   Which means I have a really good work life balance at the school.

   Of course my wage went up – though not it’s not guaranteed every year so I have to negotiate it.
   The max a 常勤 sensei can receive at our school is 600万. I get a good bit more as I also make promotional videos for them.

   The option is there but I don’t want to be a 専任 as I don’t want to do homeroom /club and all that kinda stuff.

   The Japanese teachers have to be there in summer but I really don’t want to so I also managed to negotiate keeping that off too. I need some time to see family back home etc is how I phrased it. If I was 専任 that definitely wouldn’t be happening.

   I have a friend with the licence at another school and he does homeroom / club etc at his place and sounds too busy to me.
   Definitely a case of ESID but I’m pretty happy with how mine has worked out.

   As for the licence itself, the school just fills out the form every year for a one year license and I magically receive it. Don’t have to do anything.