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Cram schools in Japan

Gakushū juku ([[wiktionary:学習塾; see cram school) are private, fee paying schools that offer supplementary classes often in preparation for key school and university entrance exams. The term is primarily used to characterize such schools in Japan. Juku typically operate after regular school hours, on weekends, and during school vacations.

Juku attendance rose from the 1970s through the mid 1980s; participation rates increased at every grade level throughout the compulsory education years. This phenomenon was a source of great concern to the Ministry of Education, which issued directives to the regular schools that it hoped would reduce the need for after school lessons, but these directives had little practical effect. Some juku have branches in the United States and other countries to help children living abroad catch up with students in Japan. While new media have been introduced into juku as instructional and delivery methods, traditional teaching is increasingly shifting to individual tutoring. This shift is partly a response by the supplementary education industry to declining numbers of children in Japan and the threat this decline poses to their industry.

There are two types of juku, academic and nonacademic.

Many other children, particularly younger children, attend nonacademic juku for piano lessons, English conversation, art instruction, Japanese calligraphy (shodō), swimming, and abacus (soroban) lessons.

Juku also play a social role, and children in Japan say they like going to juku because they are able to make new friends. Many children ask to be sent because their friends attend. Some children seem to like juku because of the closer personal contact they have with their teachers and, for students in crowded spaces like Tokyo in particular, the relief jukus can provide from small homes, family, television, Internet, and other distractions. To some observers, juku represent an attempt by parents to exercise a meaningful measure of choice in Japanese education, particularly for children attending public schools.

In many ways, juku compensate for the formal education system's inability or unwillingness to address particular individual problems. "In a 2008 government survey, two thirds of parents attributed the growing role of juku to shortcomings in public education," such as the abolition of Saturday schooling (which therefore reduces the number of hours available to cover course material) and the reduction of curricular content (see Yutori education). Juku offer a more personalized service "and many encourage individual inquisitiveness when the public system treats everyone alike. 'The juku are succeeding in ways that the schools are not,' an OECD report says."