These schools, which usually hold classes on weekends, are primarily designed to serve the children of Japanese residents temporarily residing in foreign countries so that, upon returning to their home country, they can easily re-adapt to the
Japanese educational system. As a consequence, students at these schools, whether they are Japanese nationals and/or permanent residents of the host country, are generally taught in the age-appropriate Japanese curriculum specified by the
Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). Article 26 of the
Constitution of Japan guarantees compulsory education for Japanese children in grades one through nine, so many weekend schools opened to serve students in those grades. Some weekend schools also serve high school and preschool/kindergarten. Several Japanese weekend schools operate in facilities rented from other educational institutions. The majority of the instruction is
kokugo (
Japanese language instruction). The remainder of the curriculum consists of other academic subjects, author of "Japanese Community Schools: New Pedagogy for a Changing Population", stated in 2011 that the supplementary schools were dominated by "a monoglossic ideology of protecting the Japanese language from English". The Japanese government sends full-time teachers to supplementary schools that offer lessons that are similar to those of
nihonjin gakkō, and/or those which have student bodies of 100 students each or greater. These Japanese schools primarily serve Japanese nationals from families temporarily in the United States, or
kikokushijo, and second-generation
Japanese Americans. The latter may be
U.S. citizens or they may have dual U.S.-Japanese citizenship. Because few Japanese children with Japanese as a first language in North America attend full-time Japanese schools, the majority of these children receive their primary education in
English, their second language. These supplementary schools exist to provide their Japanese-language education. Rachel Endo of
Hamline University, the author of "Realities, Rewards, and Risks of Heritage-Language Education: Perspectives from Japanese Immigrant Parents in a Midwestern Community", wrote that these schools "have rigorous academic expectations and structured content". As of 2012 the most common education option for Japanese families resident in the United States, especially those living in major metropolitan areas, is to send children to American schools during the week and use weekend Japanese schools to supplement their education. As of 2007 there were 85 Japanese supplementary schools in the United States. Some 12,500 children of Japanese nationality living in the United States attended both Japanese weekend schools and American day schools. They make up more than 60% of the total number of children of Japanese nationality resident in the United States. In the years prior to 2012, there was an increase in the number of students who were permanent residents of the United States and did not plan to go back to Japan. Instead, they attended the schools "to maintain their ethnic identity". By that year, the majority of students in the Japanese weekend schools in the United States were permanent residents of the United States. founded in 1958 and serving the
Washington, DC metropolitan area.
United Kingdom The MEXT has eight Saturday Japanese supplementary schools in operation in the U.K. As of 2013, 2,392 Japanese children in
Hythe,
Cardiff,
Derby,
Edinburgh (school is in
Livingston),
Leeds, London,
Manchester (school is in
Lymm),
Sunderland (school is in
Oxclose), and
Telford attend these schools. • –
Morley,
Erewash, Derbyshire •
Japanese Saturday School in London • –
Cardiff • – Located in
Hythe – Its time of establishment is August 2005 • –
Lymm,
Warrington, Cheshire • —
Leeds • –
Livingston (near
Edinburgh), established in 1982 • –
Stirchley, Telford • –
Oxclose,
Tyne and Wear (near
Newcastle-upon-Tyne) ==Demographics==