Following the launch of the 2nd round of Tobitate Ryugaku Scholarships for Japanese Senior High School (SHS) students by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in Japan (MEXT), the British Council Japan will run a web campaign to promote short courses targeting Japanese SHS students, their teachers and parents. UK independent schools, FE colleges and universities are invited to provide their profiles and course information to be advertised on a special campaign page inside the Education UK Japan website from January 2016.

For details of the Tobitate Scholarships for SHS students, please see our market news published on 3 November 2015: https://education-services.britishcouncil.org/news/market-news/new-round-of-mext-tobitate-ryugaku-scholarships-%E2%80%93-opportunity-promote-your-english.

<Campaign background and objectives>
With the launch of the 2^nd round of the scholarship for SHS students, it is expected that school teachers, parents and students will start searching for potential study abroad programmes that match the categories of the scholarship. This will generate opportunities for UK institutions to raise their profile and promote relevant courses amongst the target audience. This campaign aims to provide promotional support to selected UK institutions looking to take advantage of this opportunity.

For this campaign, we will focus on the promotion of the following types of courses targeted at 15 – 18 year olds:

• Short-term academic study at UK independent schools, FE colleges and universities such as summer programmes: Study of academic subjects such as Politics, Law, Science and History, which includes interaction, discussion and research activities with local and international students
• Sports / art related short courses offered by UK independent schools, FE colleges and universities: Both can be either academic study or skills training (through lessons, sports practice and matches with a sports club / team)

We are aiming to select up to 7 academic short courses and 3 sports or art related short courses for promotion. In order to maximise the impact of the campaign, we will select courses based on the institution types and whether the courses suit the purpose of the scholarship programme. For the detailed specifications, please see below.

The list of selected courses will be advertised through the following media:

• Education UK Japan website (Average monthly visits: 8,120)
• MEXT’s official campaign Facebook (13,000 likes) and Twitter (3,900 followers) accounts in December 2015 or January 2016
• The British Council Japan’s Education UK newsletter (5,200 subscribers), English Education newsletter (1,200 subscribers), Corporate e-flyer (11,000 subscribers), blog, and corporate SNS accounts (Facebook with 10,000 likes and Twitter with 11,000 followers) in January and February 2016.

We ran a similar web campaign last year promoting 20 courses. MEXT added a direct link to our web page on their site and widely disseminated this link through their official campaign Facebook page and Twitter. These campaign pages have received more than 4,172 views to date. We will be running this year's campaign in the same format. You can view last year’s campaign information at http://www.educationuk.org/japan/sub/tobitate/.

MEXT introduced the Tobitate Ryugaku Scholarships for SHS Students in 2014. In the 1st round of applications 514 applications were received and 303 scholarships awarded. 21 recipients chose the UK as their study abroad destination whereas the majority (136) chose the US or Canada.

<Specifications >

• We welcome applications from UK independent schools, FE colleges and universities.
• Courses need to fall into one of the following two categories.
  1. Short-term academic study (eg. summer school) targeting at 15-18 year olds
  *Please note that programmes which mainly consist of English language study are not applicable. If you are interested in promoting your English language courses, please see below.  https://education-services.britishcouncil.org/news/opportunities/invitation-tender-summer-study-uk-programme-japanese-high-school-students　
  2. Sports or art related short course at an independent school, FE college and university aimed at 15-18 year olds.

• Courses should meet the following criteria:
  >  Study must commence during the period between 24 June 2016 and 31 March 2017
  >  The length of study should be from 2 weeks to a maximum of 3 months

<Charges>
The charge for advertising the institution’s profile and course will be £350 (excl. UK VAT). The invoice will be sent to each participating institution at the end of December 2015. The fee covers costs for translation of the course information and promotion through the Education UK Japan website and the additional channels outlined above.

< Scheduled timeline >
8 December 2015:  Deadline for course information
14 December 2015: Selection of courses and notification of selection
Mid-December 2015: Translation of course information and creation of webpages
Late December 2015 – early January 2016:  Launch of campaign webpages and start of promotion

*Tobitate Scholarships application will close on 17 February 2016.