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After the owner of a Japanese language school in Fukuoka was arrested last year for allowing students to work more than legally allowed, the government has decided to update the rules for Japanese language schools a bit, to give them more options for dealing with badly run schools. Nothing has been officially published yet, but according to the Japan Times’ source, “under the new rules, an average student attendance rate of below 50 percent or immigration violations by more than half of a school’s students could result in revocation of its operational license”.
These aren’t particularly tough restrictions – an average attendance rate below 50 percent literally means that on average, all students come to less than half of their Japanese classes, which would be an incredibly bad situation for a language school – but they’re a good start. For Japanese language schools, receiving government accreditation is an extremely difficult process (which GenkiJACS finally managed to complete last year, after more than 10 years in business!), but once a language school is accredited, there seem to be very few continuing checks on school quality. We are happy to hear about any further measures to ensure that bad language schools are pushed out of the industry, and good schools supported. The future of the Japanese language school industry in Japan is bright!
