Nursery World - Outdoors in Japan: part 1

In the first of a four-part series, Julie Mountain explores what Japanese kindergartens can teach us about risk-taking and resilience

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Pre-school education is not compulsory in Japan, so most settings are privately run. Over 90 per cent of children attend pre-school provision of some kind, but demand is high and there is a significant gap between demand and provision, with huge waiting lists not uncommon, and queues forming outside the most popular settings on the application dates.

Urban areas suffer particularly with shortages in provision, along with staffing difficulties. In many settings, pay is low and attracting young people into the sector is difficult. So far, so not dissimilar to the UK. However, there is no Ofsted equivalent for early years provision, and while Japan’s Ministry of Education (MEXT) and its Ministry of Health jointly set a general direction for pre-school provision, settings are left to interpret and deliver their own curriculum in accordance with their own philosophy, and this results in an array of types of establishment.

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