International Baccalaureate education in Japan has received a welcome boost with news that Hiroshima Prefecture will open an IB boarding school - Hiroshima Global Academy - in Spring 2019. The project is part of the prefectural government’s aims of nurturing future global leaders and introducing alternatives to Japan’s traditional passive style of education. The school will accept 40 first-year junior high school students (aged 12) from April next year. Ultimately, each grade at junior high will have 40 Japanese students, while high school grades will comprise 40 Japanese and 20 foreign students. Students will be able to experience study abroad-style education/school life in Japan and can acquire English language skills to prepare them for entering overseas universities.

It is a rare move for a prefectural government school to offer the IB, rarer still for one to open a boarding school exclusively offering IB programmes. The majority of schools teaching the IB in Japan are international or private schools where tuition fees can be extremely high. Tuition at the Hiroshima Global Academy will essentially be free, thus enabling access to the IB regardless of economic situation.

With the opening of Hiroshima Global Academy the number of schools teaching the IB in Japan will become 61 (of which 42 offer the Diploma Programme). While this is some way below the government target of 200 IB schools by 2018 (this figure was set in 2012 with the launch of the ‘IB 200 Schools Project’), it is hoped that the Hiroshima Global Academy will stimulate other prefectures to follow suit and boost IB education.

Interest in the IB has grown significantly in Japan in recent years but its development has been hindered by a lack of qualified teachers capable of providing IB instruction in English. This has been addressed somewhat by the introduction of the Japanese Dual Language IB Diploma. Meanwhile, a number of universities including Tamagawa University and Tsukuba University now offer IB training programmes, which are helping to produce a greater number of qualified teachers. A further barrier has been a perception amongst students/parents that the IB is not useful for university entrance in Japan. This is changing, however, as more universities adopt official policies for admitting IB students (as of September 2018, 313 universities in Japan officially recognise the IB).

While IB development has been slower than the government had hoped, the IB is gaining traction in Japan and we anticipate further growth in the years to come. This is good news for UK universities because as the number of IB schools grows more Japanese high school graduates will be eligible for direct admission to UK higher education institutions. The majority of IB schools in Japan welcome visits from overseas universities so we strongly encourage UK institutions to arrange visits as part of recruitment trips to the country. For a list of schools offering the IB please refer to the International Baccalaureate Organization website.