I want to upgrade my special licence for senior high school English to a normal licence for junior and senior high school. I know there are two requirements: taking the required units related to education and your subject at university, and being in office for 3 years or more.
I have some questions related to these above requirements.
1. What is the best way to take these required units? Through a correspondence college?
2. Do I need to be employed as a 教員 for the 3 years to be valid? (Currently I am in my 2nd year as a 講師 in a prefectural school.)
3. Can I obtain the normal licence for junior high school even if I am currently only teaching at senior high school?
If anyone has any knowledge they could share on the above, I would be very grateful.
2 comments
1. Do all the credits in a Japanese university.
2. Not sure. However if you did #1, it might depend on what license you apply for or what credits your did.
3. As far as I know, the license is ok or high schools and junior high schools, and it is possible to change. Elementary schools and JHS have a different license.
That being said, teaching licenses generally have a certain area that you can work in. If you do all of the above, you’ll need to pick an area.
And then eventually, you’ll need to be ‘japanese (a citizen)’ to have any chance of being promoted to more than a teacher of a certain subject.(principal or vice principal).
Well, I’m not an expert, but my understanding is…
The system that you’ve described is for people who already have a normal license (普通免許状) and want to change school levels. For example, someone who has their elementary school license wants to change to jr. high school. They can do that by taking a few extra courses, etc. I don’t think you can upgrade your special license (特別免許状) or a temporary license (臨時免許状) to a regular license through this program, but the people to ask are the board of education for the prefecture where you want to apply to get your license. They really are the only ones who can definitively answer your questions.
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>What is the best way to take these required units? Through a correspondence college?
If the BOE that you are going to apply to will allow you to use this program (and not start from scratch) below is a list of universities that offer the upgrade courses. It’s an excel file and you can search by subject area, etc. to find the programs that would be appropriate for you and then contact that university about taking the courses. One thing to keep in mind is that many of these programs are only available to graduates of the university. They don’t allow someone who has never taken courses with them before to enroll in the upgrade courses.
[https://www.mext.go.jp/content/20230807-mxt_kyoikujinzai02-000027087_3.xls](https://www.mext.go.jp/content/20230807-mxt_kyoikujinzai02-000027087_3.xls)
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>Do I need to be employed as a 教員 for the 3 years to be valid? (Currently I am in my 2nd year as a 講師 in a prefectural school.)
Yes, my understanding is that you need to be a 教員 with a 普通免許状 to use this program.
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>Can I obtain the normal licence for junior high school even if I am currently only teaching at senior high school?
Yes, my understanding is that this is what this program is for–switching the level of school that you want to teach at.
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To be honest, I think that what you need to do to get your regular license is to enroll in an education program at a Japanese university and do the licensing program from the beginning. But again, I’m not an expert in this. I do teach at a university and I do supervise teaching practicums for students obtaining their license, so I only have periphery knowledge and experience with the licensing system. I’m sure that there is someone better than me to answer your questions.
Good luck.