Tokyo Metropolitan Government Kitatama High School (Tachikawa, Tokyo)

Tachikawa Kokusai Secondary Education Website: http://www.kitatama-h.metro.tokyo.jp/ (Japanese) / http://www.tachikawachuto-e.metro.tokyo.jp/english.html (English)

Tachikawa Kokusai Secondary School

3-29-37, Akebono-cho, Tachikawa-shi, Tokyo 190-0012

Phone:  042-524-3903 Fax: 5829

東京都立北多摩高等学校
〒190-0012
東京都立川市曙町３－２９－３７
Phone:　　（０４２）５２４－３９０３
Fax: 　　（０４２）５２７－１８２９

The school is founded on the same site as the former Kitatama High School. The school seeks to encourage cross-cultural understanding and produce well-balanced individuals able to contribute to an international society.  Inheriting the Kitatama High School’s traditions and educational practices, the school also seeks to provide each student with an academically advanced level of education through an integrated curriculum with 6 years of consistent sound education. The school tries to buck the rote method believing that there is a limit to the rote method, and aims to promote logical thinking and language education, by not dividing the students into humanities courses or science courses at an early stage as is generally done in Japanese schools.  A wide variety of classes are offered – immersion classes as well as second language classes. Non native Japanese speakers are provided with Japanese language classes to enable them to join regular classes as soon as is possible.

For queries, non-native Japanese speakers may email: S8000536@section.metro.tokyo.jp” with the subject “Queries on admission of returnee or non-Japanese students”

An excerpt from a Metropolis magazine write-up entitled “A World Apart” which mentioned the school follows below:

“While Tokyo’s foreigner parents ponder their options and struggle in a perilous economic climate, help is arriving from an unlikely place: the Tokyo Metropolitan Government. Besides the Kokusai High School in Shibuya, Kita Tama High School in Tachikawa is set to open its doors in 2008, when it will offer much of the same amenities as its Shibuya cousin. Meanwhile, more and more public schools are offering classes for foreigners, and Japanese parents themselves are starting to expect an international flavor for their children’s education.

“We have to adapt,” says Tooru Maeda, a planner in the Senior High School Education Section of the TMG. Maeda is speaking about the potentially huge influx of foreigners to the city, but he may as well be referring to Tokyo public education as a whole. Thanks to a declining birthrate, Japan’s capital finds itself with too many facilities serving not enough students, and Maeda, a youthful-looking 42-year-old formerly with the Foreign Ministry, has the thankless task of reducing the total number of high schools in the city from 208 to 180.

The goal is to revivify public education and create a more robust and responsive system, and foreign students are bound to benefit. According to Maeda, curriculum at city schools is determined by the education boards of the individual wards, and already in gaijin-heavy areas like Shinjuku, which has a large Brazilian and Chinese expat population, attention is being paid to their needs: remedial Japanese-language classes for non-native speakers are on offer.”