IB World Schools in Japan

Are you looking for an International Baccalaureate World School in Japan? Here you can find a list of Japanese schools that have a profile in the IB World Schools Yearbook.

The schools featured below offer at least one of the IB's four programmes: the Primary Years Programme (PYP), Middle Years Programme (MYP), Diploma Programme (DP) and Career-related Programme (CP). You can use the search filter below to look for schools that offer one programme in particular.

There are 103 IB World Schools in Japan, with 65 authorised to offer the International Baccalaureate Diploma. Some schools offer the IB Diploma alongside Japanese, English, Canadian or French programmes. There are also several Christian religious foundations as well as schools serving the Korean and Indian communities. For a full list of IB World Schools, see the IB's website.

Japan has a well-established international school sector that is centred on Tokyo, Nagoya, Kyoto and Osaka, with a smattering of other schools across the country. Most expatriate children are educated at international schools, which are also popular with Japanese students. English is the medium of instruction in the vast majority of international schools. Most are coeducational day schools but a small minority offer boarding and there are also a few single-sex establishments and Christian foundations. 

Japanese society is culturally and linguistically homogeneous, and foreign nationals make up just 1.5 per cent of the population. In public schools, which teach in Japanese, six years of primary education is followed by three years of junior secondary and three to four years of senior secondary education. High schools are selective and competition for places is intense. 

Education is compulsory from age six to 15 but attendance is virtually universal to the end of high school, while net enrolment in pre-schools stood at 86 per cent in 2019. Japan has more than 1,000 universities and colleges and a very high proportion of Japanese citizens hold tertiary qualifications.

IB World Schools are part of a thriving international school sector in Japan. For information on all Japanese international schools, you can visit: www.internationalschoolsearch.com