News eSports high school getting dropouts back in class

[thomas]

Japan's first e-sports high school aimed at attracting pro gamers: it proved successful against absenteeism, attracting scores of dropouts instead.

The academy, which mixes traditional class work with hours of intensive video game training, was founded to feed the growing global demand for professional gamers. But educators believe they have stumbled onto something more valuable: a model for getting students like Wataru back in school. "School refusal" — chronic absenteeism often linked to anxiety or bullying — has been a preoccupation in Japan since the early 1990s, when educators first noticed that more than one per cent of elementary and middle school students had effectively dropped out. The number has since more than doubled. Other countries like the United States have reported higher rates, but it is difficult to make direct comparisons because of varying definitions of absenteeism.

On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, pros instructed students on competition strategies for popular games like Fortnite and Valorant. On one such day, students gathered around a whiteboard for a nearly scientific lecture about the relative merits of Street Fighter characters, then broke into groups to put the lesson into action. Students studied core subjects like math, biology, and English on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Unlike at regular Japanese schools, classes started later, at 10, with no uniforms.

A Video-Gaming School Stumbles on a Way to Get Dropouts Back in Class (Published 2023)

Japan’s first e-sports high school thought it would turn out pro gamers. Instead, it attracted an unexpected demographic.

www.nytimes.com

Japan opening a video gaming/e-sports high school

The Japanese school year starts in April, after a relatively short spring break. In 2022, though, a larger-than-usual number of kids in Japan will probably be happy to get back to class, thanks to the opening of Japan’s first gaming high school. Yes, though it may sound like the setup to…

japantoday.com

eSports High School

eSports High School, a private academy operated with the support of NTTe-Sports, the competitive gaming division of NTT, and Japanese pro soccer team Tokyo Verdy’s e-sports offshoot, is Japan’s first e-sports high school. It offers a curriculum of traditional classwork with intensive video game...

• JREF
• 4 Mar 2023
• Views: 1K
• Category: Schools and Colleges