Today I’m not going to be able to talk about the issues in the whole world, so I’m going to focus more about the problems there are in Japan’s educational system.
In Japan education is available, but it might not be within reach for everyone. As you can see in the graph, college tuition has increased in the past 40 years. Private university tuition was 183,000 yen per year average and public university tuition was 36,000 yen per year in average in 1975. Compared to that private university tuition increased to 807,000 yen per year in average in 2003. That is 4.4 times the cost in 1975. But public university is nothing in comparison. Public university tuition skyrocketed to 521,000 yen per year in average in 2003. That is 14.5 times the cost. But it’s not over yet; this was a survey in 2003. University tuition has shown constant increase since 2003. High school tuition has shown similar results, about a 3% increase of tuition per year for both public and private high schools.
Even with the increase of tuitions, 97% of students go on to high school in Japan, and surprisingly only 1.7% dropout. But over 50% of families say they have or had financial issues. This is not because of the tuition; most families say it is because of the cram school.
In Japan going to cram school is very common. Over 70% of students in Japan attend or has attended cram school. And over 60% of middle school students in their last year attend cram school. This is to countermeasure the high school entrance exam. As a conclusion, cram school is a must for going on to high school.
As I said before, 50% of families are having financial issues over education tuitions, and it is mostly because of cram school. And my idea, solution, to this problem is an online video cram school taught by the students.
A completely free website that helps students that need help in education, taught by the students. The concept of this website is that it helps not only the students that can’t go to cram school because of family financial problems, that it helps every students in need. What’s great about this is that anyone can upload his or her video to this site. It can be anything related to schoolwork and education. It can be tips and tricks on how to memorize the periodic table or proof of the Pythagorean theorem or even how World War 1 started. Anything related to education is welcomed. The student who wishes to upload a video just has to record him or herself teaching the topic and upload it on the website for everyone to see.
What make this different from other online education tutoring sites? There are many of them already existing on the Internet. There are two things that make it different from other online education tutoring sites. One of it is that it is completely free. Most online tutoring sites in Japan are not free. They have a free trial and after the free trail it has monthly charges. But this website will be completely free, just like Youtube and Dailymotion. The other thing that beats the other online tutoring site is that instead of teachers teaching, like in schools and cram schools, the students teach the students. This is great because the student students can learn from someone walking in the same shoes as them.
One thing that separates cram school and online tutoring is that online tutoring will not get tired of teaching the same thing over and over again as to cram school teachers might get tired of saying the same thing. People learn in different paces. One might fully understand a topic in a day as to one might take just a minute.
Although Japan’s rate of students going to high school is 97%, more than 50% of the families say they had or have financial issues. This website should at least decrease the rate of families that have financial problems since it is free.
Thank you for listening