News Japan requiring certification for Japanese-language teachers

Under the new system, instructors will have to be certified to teach Japanese at language schools. The report does not say when the new system will be introduced. The number of Japanese-language schools has been increasing rapidly, along with the foreign student population, but critics have pointed out variations in teacher quality. The education ministry also plans to create a system to certify language schools by evaluating their curriculums. The government will scrutinize Japanese-language education more closely to improve its quality, but coming up with effective accreditation standards will be a challenge. To obtain a license as a "registered teacher of Japanese," an instructor will, in principle, have to pass both basic and advanced written examinations, then undergo practical teacher training.

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There were 242,000 foreign students in Japan as of May 2021, about twice as many as in 2008, although the number has fallen due to the COVID-19 outbreak. The number of Japanese-language schools also more than doubled over the period to 818 at the end of 2021. An executive at a language school in Tokyo said: "Some schools accepted foreigners whose main purpose [in coming to Japan] was to get them to work. That was their business, and the improvement of their Japanese-language skills became a secondary concern." One reason this happened was the difficulty in monitoring schools. These are vetted by the Ministry of Justice when they open, but afterward the screening of instructional content falls short. There are several routes to becoming a Japanese-language teacher, including private training and passing certification exams, and it has been difficult to correct for differences in teachers' ability.

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