Students will be able to get a high school education in the first Japanese cyberspace classroom starting in April, according to a team of educators and business consultant Kenichi Ohmae, president of Business BreakThrough (BBT).
The Chiba Prefectural Government has authorized Toyo Senior High School, a private school in Funabashi, Chiba Prefecture, to offer the Air Campus distance-learning course and issue high school diplomas.
BBT and Ichikawa Senior High School, run by Ichikawa Gakuen School Corp. and known for having a good program for students who want to go on to college, will provide the curriculum, designed to help graduates get into first-rate universities.
The private high school run by the Funabashi Gakuen school corporation will offer the program through an interactive distance-learning system developed by BBT, the group told a news conference Thursday that was attended by Shinichi Sanukiya, chairman of Funabashi Gakuen; Shigehisa Matsui, principal of Toyo Senior High School; and Masaichi Koga, chairman of Ichikawa Gakuen.
Ohmae, who is dean of the Kenichi Ohmae Graduate School at BBT University, a distance-learning school, told reporters the course can be taken anywhere, in Japan or abroad, as the students have basic IT skills, including knowing how to use e-mail. He said the tuition would be reasonable.
About 75,000 high school students drop out every year and many others refuse to go to school for a number of reasons, the school officials said. But most of them still want to graduate and go to a university.
The distance-learning course will give them the opportunity to reach that goal, they said, adding they want to bring a breath of fresh air to high school education at a time when student achievement and teaching quality is declining, and the dropout rate is increasing.
BBT will also provide video on the Internet for parents to help their kids study, as it believes parents play an important role in their children's education.
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