Reply #2: Only high schools are assigned on the basis of entrance exams [View All]

[Lydia Leftcoast]

Otherwise, kids normally attend their neighborhood school through ninth grade, unless their parents opt for the private school route.

An advantage of the private school route is that if you get into an elementary school that is run as a university lab school, your entrance exam days are over. You can just sail through and gain admission to the sponsoring university if you like. (These schools are called "escalator schools.")

In ninth grade, teachers and counselors advise students on what high schools they can realistically hope to get into. In the old days, when Japan had a huge demand for factory workers, a lot of kids decided not to go to high school at all. For the past couple of decades, though, Japan has had the highest high school graduation rate in the world, over 90%. As a result, the lowest-ranking high schools are like troubled schools anywhere, with bored, often ill-behaved students plagued with family problems.

A couple of years ago, I met up with DUer Art_from_Ark, who lives near Tokyo, and helped out at the English school where he works part-time. One of his students was a tiny, shy young woman who had been assigned to teach at a low-ranking high school straight out of university. The students were eating her alive, and I tried to give her hints on classroom management, but she may have been too traumatized.