What an education support center is

An education support center is a public facility for children of elementary and junior high school age who are not attending school, known in Japan as futoko (不登校). It is set up by a board of education (kyoiku iinkai / 教育委員会), in most cases the one run by your city, town or village. It sits outside the school building, usually in a community center, an education center, a former school building or rented office space.

The idea is simple. Your child keeps their place at their own school, but goes somewhere else during the day: somewhere quieter, smaller, with adults whose job is to work at your child’s pace rather than the class’s pace. Some children use a center for a few months and return to their classroom. Some stay until they graduate from junior high and move on to a high school. Some try it and decide it is not for them. All of these are normal outcomes.

Their older name is tekio shido kyoshitsu (適応指導教室, roughly “adjustment guidance classroom”), and you may still see it on signs, forms and older city web pages. The name was changed because “adjustment guidance” suggested the child was the thing that needed correcting. The newer name, “education support center”, was meant to put the emphasis on supporting the child rather than adjusting them. In practice many cities use both names, and many also give their center a friendly local nickname: Matsumoto City’s four centers are called Donguri (acorn), Mirai (future), Akari (light) and Yotsuba (four-leaf clover), and Kitanagoya City’s is called Palette. The sign on the door may not say 教育支援センター at all.

MEXT’s 2019 notice on supporting futoko children describes these centers as expected to become the core of local support. Besides helping children who come in, they can offer visiting support (houmon shien / 訪問支援) for children who do not want to leave home, and advice to schools. Services vary a lot from place to place, so treat everything below as typical rather than guaranteed.

The law behind it, and why that matters

Education support centers are not a favour. They exist because of a law: the Act on Securing Educational Opportunities (kyoiku kikai kakuho ho / 教育機会確保法, Act No. 105 of 2016, fully in force from February 2017). Its full name is long, but the short version is that it obliges national and local government to secure education for children who are not attending school.

Three parts of that law matter to you as a parent:

Alongside the law, MEXT’s notice of 25 October 2019 sets the tone that most centers now work to. It says support should not make “going to school” the only goal: the aim is that the child comes to see their own path and becomes socially independent. The same notice says that in areas with no center, a center should be set up or an equivalent arrangement put in place.

You do not need to quote law at anyone. But if a school tells you that there is nothing available, it is reasonable to ask the board of education directly, because the board, not the school, is the body the law addresses.

How many centers exist, and how many areas have none

Coverage is uneven, and this is the single biggest practical problem with education support centers.

The gap is real. In the FY2017 survey, roughly one municipality in three had no center at all, and small towns and villages were the ones most likely to have none. Prefectures sometimes fill part of the gap: Ibaraki Prefecture reported that 43 of its municipalities had a center as of April 2023, which is most but not all of them.

Meanwhile, support inside schools has grown quickly. In-school education support centers (konai kyoiku shien center / 校内教育支援センター) rose from 12,712 schools (46.1%) in July 2024 to 15,874 schools (58.7%) in June 2025. The split by school type matters: 77.5% of junior high schools had one, against 49.1% of elementary schools. If your child is in elementary school, the in-school room is less likely to exist, and the outside center may be the realistic option.

Education support center or in-school support room?

Parents often meet these two terms in the same conversation and cannot tell them apart. They are different places with different staff.

If your child can walk into the school building, ask about the in-school room first: it is usually quicker to arrange and needs no separate application. In a MEXT survey reported in October 2025, boards of education said that of the children using an in-school room, 19.5% had returned to their own class and 48.6% showed an improvement in their situation, while for 21.6% the room worked as an everyday place to be inside school. That last group is not a failure. For many children, having somewhere to be is the point.

Who can use one

Centers are generally for children enrolled at, or living in the area of, the municipality’s public elementary and junior high schools. Saitama City’s centers are for elementary and junior high students who live or attend school in the city. Osaka City’s three centers are for students enrolled in Osaka City elementary, junior high and compulsory education schools. Sapporo City states that its centers are for futoko children at municipal elementary and junior high schools. Conditions differ, so check with your city.

Your child does not leave their school. They stay enrolled and attend the center instead of, or alongside, their classes.

If your child is struggling for reasons connected with developmental differences, say so at the first meeting. Centers are not specialist facilities, but staff can only adapt to what they know about. Our page on neurodivergent children in Japanese schools has wording you can use.

What it costs, and help with travel costs

Education support centers are usually free. Saitama City and Musashino City, for example, state on their official pages that their centers are free of charge. There is no tuition, no entrance fee and no monthly payment in the ordinary case.

What families do sometimes pay for:

• Lunch. Most centers do not serve school lunch (kyushoku / 給食). Kitanagoya City tells families that a child staying for the whole day must bring a packed lunch (bento / 弁当).
• Travel. Trains, buses or bicycle parking, if the center is not close to home.
• Materials and activities. Cooking ingredients, craft materials, entrance fees for outings. These are charged at cost where they are charged at all.

Some cities help with these costs for families already receiving school-cost assistance. Chiba City, for example, subsidizes activity costs for children who attend a center and whose principal has recognized the attendance, where the family is certified as yohogo or jun-yohogo (要保護・準要保護, the categories used for school cost assistance), and travel costs for jun-yohogo families. The published annual limits are 1,600 yen for activity costs for elementary age and 2,310 yen for junior high age, with a combined ceiling including travel costs of 47,800 yen and 83,210 yen respectively. Travel costs are limited to the cheapest ordinary route and apply from 2 km for elementary and 4 km for junior high students.

For the wider question of what school itself costs and what assistance exists, see attendance rules and costs.

How to apply: who to tell, and in what order

The route differs by city, but it almost always runs through your child’s school, the board of education, or both. Osaka City asks families to consult the school first, or to contact the board of education directly, and offers a visit to the facility. Musashino City asks families to phone and make an appointment. Gyoda City asks the parent to phone for an education consultation, then holds an interview with the child and parent, after which attendance begins via the principal of the enrolled school. Nagano City simply says: talk to your child’s school.

If you are not sure who to approach first, our page on where to get help maps out the public services around a child who is not going to school.

What the first meeting and trial visits are like

In most cities, the parent goes first and the child joins later. The first meeting is a conversation, not an assessment. Expect to be asked when the absences started, what your child says about school, what they do at home, how they sleep and eat, and what you are hoping for. It is reasonable to answer “I do not know yet” to the last one.

Two things are worth asking for at this stage, because they are easier to agree at the start than to renegotiate later: a short first day, and no fixed promise about how often your child will come. Many children manage one hour on the first day and nothing at all on the second. That is a normal shape for the first month.

A day at the center: three official examples

In MEXT’s survey covering 2017, most centers were open all day on weekdays. The table below sets out three timetables published by city boards of education, so you can see how similar and how different they are.

The pattern is consistent: roughly half the day is study at the child’s own pace, a quarter is physical or creative activity, and the rest is arrival, lunch, tidying and a short reflection. Sapporo City describes its centers as running from 09:00 to 15:15, with children’s activity time from 09:30 to 14:30, and lists study towards each child’s own goals plus making things, light exercise and card games.

Nationally, the most common activities in MEXT’s FY2017 survey were:

That last figure matters if your child cannot leave the house. Roughly a third of centers will come to you. Ask about it by name: houmon shien (訪問支援) or katei houmon (家庭訪問).

Who works there

Centers are not staffed by your child’s teachers, and they are not clinics. In MEXT’s FY2017 survey, centers nationwide employed 1,106 full-time and 4,921 part-time staff. Among full-time staff, 44.6% came from education-related professions and 30.9% were retired teachers. Among part-time staff, 43.1% were retired teachers and 23.3% came from education-related professions.

Group sizes are small, but no national figure exists. Osaka City’s staffing gives a rough sense of scale: a handful of adults per center. Ask directly: “How many children come on a typical day?” It changes the feel of the place more than anything on the website.

Attendance, grades and high school entrance

Under MEXT’s notice of 25 October 2019, days spent receiving consultation and guidance at a public facility such as an education support center can be counted as present at the enrolled school, known as shusseki atsukai (出席扱い). The principal of your child’s school makes the decision, based on whether the arrangement is judged appropriate in light of the school’s curriculum.

In practice this is close to routine. In MEXT’s FY2017 survey, about 93% to 94% of children using centers were counted as present at their own school. Kitanagoya City states plainly that attending the center counts as school attendance. Nagano City words it more carefully: if certain conditions are met, it is recorded as attendance on the school record. Both wordings are common, and both mean you should confirm it in your own case rather than assume it.

Grades and school reports

Attendance and grades are separate questions. Being marked present does not by itself produce a grade for a subject. Whether your child receives grades, and on what basis, depends on what evidence the school has: work done at the center, tests taken at school or at the center, and the school’s own rules. MEXT has been funding ICT arrangements so that children at centers can connect to the enrolled school, receive instruction and sit tests online, with the results reflected in their grades. Ask your school whether that is possible.

High school entrance

For junior high students this is usually the worry underneath all the others. Three honest points:

• Absences and the school report (naishinsho / 内申書) are treated differently by every prefecture and every high school. Ask the homeroom teacher how your prefecture handles it, and ask early, ideally in the second year.
• Days counted as attendance at a center are recorded as attendance, which helps.
• Many routes to high school place little or no weight on junior high attendance. Correspondence high schools are the clearest example: in a MEXT survey of 323 correspondence high schools published in September 2026, 57.0% of entrants had been futoko in their third year of junior high. See correspondence high schools.

Centers are used to this conversation. In the FY2017 survey, third-year junior high students were the largest single group at centers, precisely because that is when families start looking for a route forward.

Getting there, lunch and other practical questions

Staying in touch with your child’s school

Using a center does not cut the link with school, and it should not mean you deal with two separate bureaucracies. In most cities the center and the school exchange information: attendance is reported back so it can be recorded, and staff may talk about how your child is doing.

Agree three things early:

• Who tells whom. If your child is not going to the center one day, do you phone the center, the school, or both? Most families end up phoning both. Our templates for telling a Japanese school your child is absent work for the center too.
• What gets shared. Ask what the center passes to the school. Some families are comfortable with everything; some would rather counseling content stayed private. You can say so.
• How often you will all meet. A short termly meeting with the homeroom teacher and a center staff member prevents most misunderstandings.

Keep the school relationship alive even if your child never enters the building. Handouts, class newsletters and notice of events cost nothing to receive, and make it easier if your child later wants to go back.

If it does not suit your child, or you want to stop

Trying a center and stopping is not a failure, and it does not use up a chance. There is no national rule that limits how many times a child may start. Some children find the group too big, the room too bright, the journey too long, or simply that being asked to be anywhere at 9 a.m. is the problem.

If your child stops, ask the board of education what else exists locally. Roughly a third of centers offer visiting support at home, and that may work better than a building.

Using more than one place at the same time

Families often ask whether a child can use a center and something else together: a center on two days and a free school on two days, or a center plus online learning at home. There is no national rule against it, and in practice it is common. What you need to check is how each part is recorded.

The practical limit is usually your child’s energy, not the rules. Two places in one week is a lot for a child who has been at home for months.

For foreign-national and multilingual families

This is the part most Japanese-language guides leave out, so we will be specific.

First, the legal background. In Japan, the compulsory schooling obligation under the School Education Act applies to guardians of Japanese nationals. MEXT states that there is no such obligation on guardians of foreign national children, but that foreign national children who wish to attend public elementary and junior high schools are admitted free of charge, on the same terms as Japanese children. Boards of education are asked to make sure foreign children do not miss the chance to enroll. MEXT issued a further notice on promoting enrollment of foreign children on 28 August 2026, which covers enrollment guidance, non-enrollment, Japanese-language instruction, consultation systems, multilingual support, and futoko among foreign students.

Second, the scale of the need. As of 1 May 2025, 84,759 children in Japanese public schools were assessed as needing Japanese-language instruction, a record high: 73,313 foreign nationals and 11,446 Japanese nationals. Of those, 88.6% were receiving instruction based on special consideration for their situation. In other words, your family is not unusual, and the system has language provisions, even if a particular center has never used them.

What to ask about language

• Ask at the first contact whether any staff speak English or your home language, and whether the center has worked with a child who is still learning Japanese.
• Ask the board of education whether an interpreter can attend the first interview. This is often arranged through the city’s international association (kokusai koryu kyokai / 国際交流協会) or a multilingual consultation desk, rather than by the center itself.
• If your child receives Japanese-language support at school, ask whether that can continue, or be replicated, while they attend the center.
• Ask for written communication rather than phone calls where possible, so you can translate it.
• Use a browser translator for the city’s Japanese pages. Boards of education rarely publish center details in English.

Japanese phrases for the board of education

Japanese phrases for the center and the school

More wording for school conversations, including absence messages and meeting requests, is on our Japanese phrases for talking to school page, and Japanese school terms are explained in the glossary. If your family is newer to the Japanese system, how Japanese schools work gives the background.

If there is no center near you

Not every municipality has a center. In MEXT’s survey covering 2017, about 63% of municipalities had one, meaning that roughly a third had none. The number of centers has grown since, but gaps remain, especially in smaller towns. If your area has none:

• ask whether a neighbouring town’s or the prefecture’s center accepts children from your area;
• ask whether the board of education offers visiting support or online support instead, since MEXT’s 2019 notice asks areas without a center to put an equivalent arrangement in place;
• ask your child’s school about an in-school support room, which is now more common than an outside center;
• ask about the school counselor and the school social worker, who are separate from both;
• look at free schools, online schools or learning at home, and discuss attendance with the school.

Our learning place finder asks eight questions and suggests what to look at in your area.

Education support center, free school, online school or school for diverse learning?

Education support centers are one of several places a child can learn outside a regular classroom. This table is the short version of the whole decision.

A few notes on that table. Free school fees vary so much between facilities that any single monthly figure would mislead; we deal with that on the free schools page. Schools for diverse learning are still rare: MEXT’s list shows 84 of them, made up of 6 elementary, 68 junior high and 10 high schools, against the COCOLO Plan’s eventual target of 300. Many areas have none within reach.

The ordinary sequence for most families is: try the in-school room, then the education support center, then private options, because the first two are free and the principal’s decision on attendance is simplest for them. But that is a default, not a rule. If your child has a clear reason to prefer something else, say so.

What this page does not cover

We have kept to what we could verify from MEXT, boards of education and city pages. That leaves gaps, and it is better to name them:

• Your own city’s rules. Opening hours, eligibility, part-time attendance and costs are set locally. Everything here is an example.
• Waiting times. No national data exists. Some centers start within weeks, some have a queue.
• Language support at individual centers. We could not find national data on multilingual provision at education support centers, and most city pages are silent on it. You have to ask.
• High school age. Provision for students over 15 sits mostly outside this system.
• Medical and psychological advice. We do not give it. Talk to your doctor, a school counselor or a child consultation center.

If you find something on this page that is out of date or wrong in your municipality, please tell us through our corrections policy.

Frequently asked questions

Related pages

In Japanese: Education support center guideJA · Find a centerJA · In-school support center (glossary)JA

Sources