Japan now boasts of its first and only school for the gifted: Tokyo Children’s Academy (a.k.a. Tokyo Gifted Academy)

Also known as Tokyo Gifted Academy, the Tokyo Children’s Academy (website http://www.tokyochildrensacademy.com/academy.htm)  has only been operating into its first school calendar year.

It has the distinction of being the first and only international school in Japan that is exclusively for children with advanced cognitive abilities. (Dalton School is the other private school that had its beginnings as a juku-preschool that catered for gifted children, but that school is Japanese.) 

The private school aims to provide an individualized education, that will appropriately challenge each student’s abilities and to provide access to academic opportunities without discrimination on the basis of chronological age. The school’s programs address each student’s unique needs for an accelerated and challenging program and nurture the special needs and interests of the child’s development.

Academically, Tokyo Children’s Academy’s philosophy is to teach the children new information as they are ready for it. Small class sizes and low student to teacher ratios facilitate the diversified curriculum. By incorporating daily computers, science, logic, and foreign language, the school is able to expand the children’s academic opportunities and make school fun. By eliminating needless repetition and diversifying the academics, the school is able to accelerate to meet each child’s needs.

Students are grouped by learning goals, project goals and academic level.  They work with a variety of other students in different learning projects based on their needs. There are no grade levels, instead children are generally grouped as follows: Primary 3-5, Lower-Elementary 6-8, Upper-Elementary 9-11 and Middle school 12-14. Academically, the school seeks to provide innumerable activities that foster high-level thinking, encouraging students to go far beyond factual material, encouraging them to think outside of the box, synthesizing and evaluating divergent materials. The school takes pride in its es pride in their highly academic program with reading and math as the cornerstone of the curriculum. Through the incorporation of Montessori materials, online classes, educational software, textbooks, and workbooks along with various curriculum models, an Individual Education Plan is created for the student that is based on the academic level and learning ability of each individual child. The teaching of problem solving skills and critical thinking are also important elements in the curriculum.

Since the school provide classes composed of intellectual and developmentally equal peers of similar age and pace of learning,  special requirements must be met for admissions: only children that score around the top 5% on the Woodcock-Johnson tests of Cognitive Abilities (WJ-III) and who are performing above grade level  are admitted.

 Tuition fees for 2009-2010 are between 2 million to 2,100,000 yen
(see fee schedule http://www.tokyochildrensacademy.com/Tuition_and_Fees.htm)
IQ tests alone can set you back between around 300,000 to 400,000 yen

Location:

YODA Bldg. 2~5 floor, 3-15-13  Shiba, Minato-Ku Tokyo 105-0014
Phone: (03) 5765-6697 Fax: 5765-6698 mail: admin@tokyogiftedacademy.com

Source: Information gleaned from the school website