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Empowering
Tomorrow’s Talents:
Online Access to High-Quality
Education for All
To realize a world in which all individuals
can live life to the fullest, we must find ways
to empower those people to live up to their
full potential. Nurturing the children and
youths who are our future is a particularly
important task for Japan, a nation facing a
low birthrate and falling population. Recruit
strives to do away with inequalities in the
field of education and to create a society
where people can fulfill their desire to learn.
And by fostering globally minded human
resources and focusing on career-oriented
education, we work to create the people
who will drive the industry of tomorrow.
Social Issue
Recruit’s Approach
Fiscal 2014 Activity Highlights
Our Challenges in Fiscal 2015
Economic Burdens and Regional Gaps in
Educational Services
Online Access to Affordable, High-Quality Learning
Materials
Supporting High School Education with Our
Learning Service
Making Jyuken Sapuri a Next-Generation Online
Education Platform
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Empowering Tomorrow’s Talents :
Online Access to High-Quality Education for All
High-Quality
Online Learning for All
Social Issue
Economic Burdens and Regional
Gaps in Educational Services
■ Jyuken Sapuri: A Product of Partnership
Schools
Educators
National
government
Exam prep
schools
Local
governments
Recruit Marketing Partners Co., Ltd., has for 45 years
Recruit’s Approach
engaged with high school students determining their
Online Access to Affordable,
High-Quality Learning Materials
academic options through its higher education
informational publications. During this period one
social issue has become clear from the feedback
Statistics show that while 62.4% of children from
received from the students and their guardians: the
Japanese households earning ¥10 million or more a
growing gaps in the education available to people
year go on to university, just 31.4% of those from
depending on their family income or place of
households earning less than ¥4 million annually do.
residence.
Meanwhile, as Japan’s birthrate continues to stagnate,
Fumihiro Yamaguchi, the original developer of the
the private-sector educational market is seeing
Jyuken Sapuri entrance exam information website and
institutions close their doors, especially in areas
CEO of Recruit Marketing Partners, notes that this was
outside of the main urban markets. In this way the
a key discovery in the course of interacting with many
urban/rural geographical divide is creating disparity in
high schoolers and their parents. “There are some
students’ ability to access exam prep school services.
students who would like to take part in supplementary
This educational gap, which robs young people of
education programs at exam prep schools but cannot
their freedom to learn, has grown wider over time,
because of their families’ economic circumstances.
locking them into limited choices when it comes to
Other students living in rural areas, where the major
their educational and career futures.
prep schools have no branches, lack the access to the
Recruit’s response to this issue, inspired by the
dynamic, effective teachers making their names at the
mission of giving all young people who aspire to
schools in Japan’s major cities. We’re seeing paths
higher education the chance to obtain it, was Jyuken
being closed to young people in a society with rising
Sapuri. This new project, an online learning service for
inequality. I believe Recruit must tackle this issue.”
high school students preparing to take university
entrance exams, drew on the experience of high
school teachers, well-known educators, and other
experts in the education sector. The service gives
users access to lectures by pro instructors and also
lets them download past questions from the National
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Empowering Tomorrow’s Talents:
Online Access to High-Quality Education for All
Center Test for University Admissions and other
Jyuken Sapuri account, and fully 130,000 of them had
entrance exams. Unlike the educational services from
upgraded to paid accounts to make more active use of
other companies in the industry, which can cost
the service (as of April 2015). Japan as a whole saw
hundreds of thousands of yen a year, Jyuken Sapuri
550,000 high school seniors take university entrance
makes all of these top-flight learning materials
exams last fiscal year, meaning that more than half of
available to all students for just ¥980 a month. This
them were Jyuken Sapuri users. “We can’t engage in a
affordable service is available to anyone, anywhere, at
race to the bottom with cheap, shoddy service,” says
any time.
Recruit Marketing Partners CEO Fumihiro Yamaguchi.
In March 2015, we extended this strategy with
“We can only do away with the inequalities in society if
Benkyo Sapuri, our service for elementary and junior
we provide a product to rival the big-name exam prep
high school students. Recruit continues its pursuit of
schools. Happily, many renowned educators feel the
the goal of a world where all people have an equal
same way that we do, and they’ve joined us in
opportunity to learn.
pursuing this goal.”
■University Attendance by Household Income
University
Junior college
Employment
Professional training school
Repeat entrance exam
(Advancement ratio)
60%
44%
50%
40%
49%
55%
62%
in-depth test-preparation exercises even from areas
individual users. Over time, though, as high school
< ¥4M
¥4M–¥6M
¥6M–¥8M
¥8M–¥10M >¥10M (Household income)
■University Attendance by Area of Residence
Urban
(Advancement ratio)
70%
Rural
65%
58%
60%
48%
50%
30%
from countless high schoolers who enjoy access to
Jyuken Sapuri started out as a service geared to
10%
40%
teachers. We have received very positive feedback
while studying abroad.
20%
0%
substance, put together by a team of top-flight
that lack supplementary educational institutions or
31%
30%
Jyuken Sapuri is now a program with deep
35%
30%
< ¥4M
60%
49%
51%
took on new value as a means of contributing to
school education in Japan. Yamaguchi traveled all
over the country to support schools implementing
Jyuken Sapuri as part of the curriculum. What he
found was an increasingly fatigued educational scene.
“In a few years, we’re going to see a wave of veteran
teachers retire en masse. Japanese teachers are
already said to be among the world’s busiest, which
means it will be still harder to create a quality learning
41%
¥4M–¥6M
educators started making it a part of their lessons, it
¥6M–¥8M
¥8M–¥10M >¥10M (Household income)
Source: University of Tokyo Center for Research on University Management
and Policy, Preliminary Report on the Survey Tracking High School Students’
Advancement (September 2007).
Fiscal 2014 Activity Highlights
Supporting High School Education
with Our Learning Service
Since its launch in 2011, Jyuken Sapuri has seen its
subscriber numbers grow to a cumulative 1.5 million.
In fiscal 2014, there were 300,000 students in their last
year of high school who had signed up for a free
environment for Japan’s children. I think there’s a real
opportunity for Jyuken Sapuri to help improve the
situation in schools.” Today some 700 high schools
nationwide have made the service a part of their
educational approach, and more are doing so all the
time.
■ High School Teachers’ Weekly Work Hours
Int’l avg.:
38 hours
Classroom:
19 hours
Japan avg.:
54 hours
Classroom:
18 hours
0
15
Outside class:
19 hours
Nonteaching
tasks take up
too much time
Outside class:
36 hours
30
45
60
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Empowering Tomorrow’s Talents:
Online Access to High-Quality Education for All
Message from a Partner
Yoshifumi Koyama,
math teacher and guidance division chief,
Shizuoka Eiwa Girls’ Junior & Senior High School
To make it through the entrance exam process
successfully takes more than just answering the
questions on the paper. At our school, we wanted our
students to engage in self-guided study giving them the
ability to identify problems and find solutions on their
own. Jyuken Sapuri fit in perfectly with this plan. Not
only was it affordable enough to propose to the parents,
it also featured easy-to-absorb lesson content.
Shizuoka Eiwa is trying the “flipped classroom”
approach, with the delivery of instruction taking part
outside the classroom through online lectures and class
time dedicated to review activities and the like. Jyuken
Sapuri plays a vital role in this. The combination of
face-to-face class time for student questions and the
Jyuken Sapuri program, which lets them drill down in
the learning areas that interest them most, lets each
student learn in the way most effective for her.
Gaining new skills like these takes time—time that
must be freed up by making today’s classroom learning
more productive. Yamaguchi notes: “There are only so
many hours in the day. Many students go to prep
schools or other lessons after school lets out. I don’t
think they have enough time left to play with their
friends, to spend time with family, or to do the things
they really want to. And this time is the key to making
people more creative, sensitive individuals.”
To help children regain an appropriate study-life
balance in their lives, we are working with Associate
Professor Yutaka Matsuo of the University of Tokyo, a
leading artificial intelligence researcher, to develop a
system for more efficient basic education. Research into
big data, including students’ past learning records, lets
us determine the ideal study methods for each
individual, making their study hours more productive. In
ways like this, our Sapuri series of products continues to
evolve as services that benefit all of society by tackling
the issues facing the educational sector as a whole.
Yamaguchi goes on: “Educational inequalities are a
global issue, not just a Japanese problem. We’ve got our
Our Challenges in Fiscal 2015
Making Jyuken Sapuri a NextGeneration Online Education Platform
To deliver the best possible education to as many as
possible. With this as our goal, we will continue
collaborating with top-quality teachers and professionals
active in a range of fields as we flesh out the program’s
content. We will also be working to ensure that Jyuken
Sapuri grows beyond providing learning support in
conventional fields. In recent years, Japan’s Education
Ministry has been at the forefront of efforts to move
away from rote memorization toward education that
helps students gain valuable skills for living.
In response to this fundamental reform of Japanese
education, Jyuken Sapuri has launched a new program
taught by the educator Kazuhiro Fujiwara, famed for his
“Yononaka” (real world) learning program. This is not
one-direction lecturing from teacher to student, but
rather a more dynamic approach to active learning that
hones learners’ thinking ability through problems with
more than one answer. The goal is to give them
enhanced life skills.
eye on developing this business globally to deliver the
joy of learning to as many people as possible
worldwide.”
Message from a Partner
Kazuhiro Fujiwara,
educational innovator
Japan’s Education Ministry is urging a shift to “active
learning” methods in the classroom. The model for
this is my “Yononaka” learning program, accessible
online through the Jyuken Sapuri service. Children
engage in debates on questions that have more than
just one answer. Through roleplaying and
brainstorming, they develop deeper ideas and gain
valuable skills for thinking, judgment, and
expression. It’s important for us to nurture young
people who can express their own opinions. In the
future, as information processing work is increasingly
left up to computers and robots, we will see
“information compilation” skills become increasingly
vital. Fostering these skills to arrange and
understand data will be a key way for young people
to forge their future career paths.
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