Public, Private, and National Schools: Japan's School Types
Public, private, and national schools in Japan are defined by law according to which body is allowed to establish them, not simply by who charges tuition.1 Confusing the three, especially treating "national" (kokuritsu) as a variant of "public" (kōritsu), can lead a family to misjudge both the cost and the odds of getting a seat.
Procedures, fees, and requirements can change. Confirm current details at the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) website.
Overview
Japan's kindergarten-through-university system runs on a three-tier ownership taxonomy set by national statute: kōritsu (public), shiritsu (private), and kokuritsu (national).1 School Education Act (学校教育法) Article 2 limits who may establish a school to three kinds of body: the national government, a local public body such as a prefecture or municipality, or a school juridical person formed under the Private School Act.1 Those three establishing bodies map directly onto kokuritsu, kōritsu, and shiritsu.
This taxonomy applies at every level from kindergarten through university, and the definitions themselves are uniform nationwide.1 What varies locally is how each tier plays out in practice: which specific public school a child is assigned to, and how common private and national options are in a given region. Later sections in this article flag those two scoped elements explicitly rather than treating them as a flat national picture.
This article assumes familiarity with the level structure itself, elementary through university. For a walkthrough of those levels, see "Japan's 6-3-3-4 School System: The Five Tiers Explained."
The Three School Types
This three-way split, kōritsu vs. shiritsu vs. kokuritsu, sets the funding, management, and admission mechanics apart at every level. The diagram below shows how School Education Act Article 2's three establishing bodies map onto each tier.1
Kōritsu: Public Schools
Kōritsu schools are established and operated by a prefecture (都道府県立) or a municipality (市町村立), per School Education Act Article 2.1
Kōritsu is the majority tier at every level below university: it accounts for 98.30% of elementary schools and 91.40% of junior high schools nationwide by count (as of 2025-05-01; confirm current figures with MEXT).2
Kōritsu tuition is free at the compulsory grades (elementary and junior high) under the Basic Act on Education. The specific legal scope of that guarantee is covered in "Compulsory Education in Japan: Rules for Foreign Children," and this article does not repeat that legal derivation.
Public elementary and junior high assignment is not a family choice by default. The municipal board of education assigns each child to a specific school based on a school-district line; see "District Assignment at Public Elementary and Middle School" below.3
Public high school works differently from public elementary and junior high school. Admission runs through a prefectural entrance exam plus application records, not a district assignment.4
Shiritsu: Private Schools
Shiritsu schools are established and operated by a gakkō hōjin (学校法人, "school juridical person"), a nonprofit corporate entity created specifically to run one or more schools under the Private School Act.1
Shiritsu schools operate at every level from elementary through university, and every one of those levels uses application-and-exam ("juken") admission, unlike kōritsu at the compulsory grades.14
Shiritsu is a minority tier at the compulsory grades but the dominant tier at university. By school count, shiritsu accounts for 1.34% of elementary schools and 7.92% of junior high schools nationwide, versus 76.85% of universities (as of 2025-05-01).2
Shiritsu schools charge fees at every level and are consistently more expensive than kōritsu. See "Tuition by Tier" below for figures.
Kokuritsu: National Schools
Kokuritsu schools are established by the national government. In practice, kokuritsu elementary, junior high, and high schools are "attached schools" (附属学校) operated by a national university corporation, not standalone institutions.1
Kokuritsu is a small tier nationwide: 66 elementary schools out of 18,607 total (0.35% by count), 67 of 9,827 junior high schools (0.68%), and 15 of 4,761 high schools (0.32%) (as of 2025-05-01).2
By enrollment, kokuritsu accounts for 0.60% of elementary students, 0.85% of junior high students, and 0.28% of high school students nationwide (as of 2025-05-01).2
Admission is exam-based and often includes a lottery stage, rather than district assignment, with a small number of seats nationwide relative to demand in major metro areas.21
Tuition sits close to kōritsu levels, not shiritsu levels: kokuritsu is free at the compulsory grades, matching kōritsu, and only modestly priced at high school. See "Tuition by Tier" below for exact figures.
Terminology
| Term | Reading | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 公立 | kōritsu | "Public"; established and funded by a prefecture or municipality1 |
| 私立 | shiritsu | "Private"; established by a school juridical person (gakkō hōjin)1 |
| 国立 | kokuritsu | "National"; established by the national government, operated in practice as a school attached to a national university1 |
| 一条校 | ichijōkō | "Article 1 school"; the formally recognized school types listed in School Education Act Article 1. Kōritsu, shiritsu, and kokuritsu are all subsets of this category1 |
| 各種学校 | kakushu gakkō | "Miscellaneous school"; the legal category most international schools fall into, defined by School Education Act Article 134, distinct from the ichijōkō system1 |
| 学校法人 | gakkō hōjin | "School juridical person"; the nonprofit corporate entity that must be formed to establish a shiritsu school1 |
| 学校基本調査 | Gakkō Kihon Chōsa | MEXT's annual School Basic Survey, the primary statistical source for this article's school-count and enrollment figures, conducted every year since 19482 |
How Each Tier Admits Students
Each tier uses a different admission mechanism. Public elementary and junior high assign a specific school by address; public high school, private schools, and national schools all use some form of entrance exam.
District Assignment at Public Elementary and Middle School
A municipal board of education must designate which kōritsu elementary, junior high, or compulsory-education school a child attends, whenever the municipality operates two or more such schools. This is set by the School Education Act Enforcement Order (学校教育法施行令), Article 5, Paragraph 2.3
The designation is based on a school-district boundary (通学区域, also called 学区, gakku) that the board sets in advance. The Enforcement Order does not fix district lines nationally: each municipality draws its own.3 Do not assume one municipality's district map applies to a neighboring one; this is scoped locally by design.
A guardian may petition for a change of designated school under Enforcement Order Article 8, for reasons the board judges appropriate. Commuting convenience and bullying response are commonly cited examples.3 The board must publish its own criteria and procedure for such requests in advance.
Attendance at a school outside one's own municipality (区域外就学) requires the written consent of the receiving municipality's board of education.3
Parents moving from a system where school choice is the norm sometimes assume they can pick a public elementary or junior high school directly. The municipal board makes that assignment; a family can only request a change through the Article 8 petition process, and the board is not required to grant it.3
Terminology
| Term | Reading | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 通学区域 / 学区 | tsūgaku kuiki / gakku | The geographic school-district boundary a municipal board of education uses to assign a child to a specific kōritsu elementary or junior high school3 |
| 就学すべき学校の指定 | shūgaku subeki gakkō no shitei | The formal municipal designation of which public school a child must attend3 |
| 区域外就学 | kuiki-gai shūgaku | Attendance at a public school outside the family's own municipality, which requires the receiving municipality's consent3 |
Entrance Exams for Public High School, Private Schools, and National Schools
Public high school admission runs through the prefectural board of education (or, in some cases, the prefectural governor), combining an academic-ability test (学力検査) with school records (調査書) and often an interview.4 The operative national guidance is a 1993 MEXT notice directing selection to judge a candidate's "ability and aptitude suitable for the school's education."4
Shiritsu and kokuritsu schools run their own application-and-exam admissions instead, elementary through university for shiritsu, elementary through high school for kokuritsu. The operating school juridical person or the national university president manages the process, not the prefectural board of education.14
Juken (受験, sitting an entrance exam) culture, meaning the practice of sitting entrance exams for a shiritsu or kokuritsu school below high school, is heavily concentrated in greater Tokyo rather than being a national norm. See "Private-School Density Is a Tokyo Story More Than a Japan Story" below for sourced figures.56
Terminology
| Term | Reading | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 学力検査 | gakuryoku kensa | The academic-ability test used in public high school entrance selection4 |
| 調査書 | chōsasho | The school record or transcript submitted as part of a public high school application4 |
| 受験 | juken | To sit an entrance exam; used generically for the practice of exam-based school admission |
Tuition by Tier
Cost ordering runs the same direction at every level: kōritsu lowest, kokuritsu low, and shiritsu highest. Kokuritsu is free at the compulsory grades, matching kōritsu, and only modestly priced at high school. The legal definition of "tuition-free" at kōritsu's compulsory grades, Basic Act on Education Article 5(4), is covered in "Compulsory Education in Japan: Rules for Foreign Children" and is not repeated here.
Total Annual Learning Cost by Tier
MEXT's Survey on Educational Costs (子供の学習費調査) is the source for the two tables in this subsection. The most recently published edition covers the 2023 school year, with corrected results published 2026-01-16 (as of the 2023 school year; confirm current figures with MEXT).7 Figures are per child, per year, and combine school-education costs, school lunch, and out-of-school activities.
| Level | Public (¥/yr) | Private (¥/yr) | Private ÷ Public |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kindergarten | 184,646 | 347,338 | 1.9x |
| Elementary | 366,599 | 1,741,516 | 4.8x |
| Junior high | 542,450 | 1,560,359 | 2.9x |
| High school (full-time) | 596,954 | 1,179,261 | 2.0x |
School-Education Costs Only, a Narrower Measure
The same survey also isolates "school education costs" (学校教育費), limited to tuition, entrance fees, facilities fees, and required supplies, excluding lunch and out-of-school activities. This is a narrower, more tuition-like number than the total above (as of the 2023 school year).7
| Level | Public (¥/yr) | Private (¥/yr) | Private ÷ Public |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kindergarten | 69,362 | 154,062 | 2.2x |
| Elementary | 74,336 | 978,271 | 13.2x |
| Junior high | 150,761 | 1,128,061 | 7.5x |
| High school (full-time) | 351,523 | 832,650 | 2.4x |
The two measures diverge sharply, especially at elementary school. Total learning cost puts private at 4.8 times public at elementary and 2.9 times at junior high; the narrower school-education-cost figure puts private at 13.2 times public at elementary and 7.5 times at junior high. Cite the specific measure being used: the two are not interchangeable.
University and High School Tuition Amounts
Ordinance-set tuition figures at university and high school differ by tier, and the dates behind each figure differ by row below.
| Item | Amount | As of | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| National/public university standard tuition (undergraduate and graduate) | ¥535,800/yr | Ordinance standard, unchanged since FY20058 | Each university may set up to 120% of this as a ceiling |
| National/public university tuition ceiling | ¥642,960/yr | Same ordinance8 | 120% of the standard amount |
| Kokuritsu (national) attached high school standard tuition | ¥115,200/yr | Ordinance standard89 | |
| Kōritsu (public) high school standard tuition | ¥118,800/yr (¥9,900/mo) | Current nationwide standard109 | |
| Private university average tuition (undergraduate) | ¥968,069/yr | FY2025 entrants11 | Tuition only, excludes admission and facility fees |
| Private university average admission fee (one-time) | ¥240,365 | FY2025 entrants11 | |
| Private university average facility fee | ¥172,550/yr | FY2025 entrants11 | |
| Private university average total first-year payment | ¥1,507,647 | FY2025 entrants11 | Tuition plus admission fee plus facility fee combined |
| Private high school average tuition | ¥457,331/yr | FY202412 | |
| Private high school average total first-year payment | ¥780,460 | FY202412 | Tuition plus entrance fee plus facility fee combined |
The High School Tuition Support Fund
Since April 1, 2026, the High School Tuition Support Fund (高等学校等就学支援金) covers the full standard high school tuition amount for every household, regardless of income (as of 2026-04-01).1013 This followed the abolition of the roughly ¥9.1 million household-income cap that applied through FY2025. The fund covers tuition only: entrance fees, textbooks, uniforms, commuting, and club-activity fees remain the family's responsibility at every tier, including kōritsu and kokuritsu.10
National (kokuritsu) compulsory-grade attached schools, elementary, junior high, and compulsory-education school, charge no entrance fee, and the ordinance sets no tuition figure at all for these levels. This is consistent with compulsory education being tuition-free regardless of kōritsu or kokuritsu status.8
Terminology
| Term | Reading | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 学習費総額 | Gakushūhi Sōgaku | "Total learning cost," the survey metric combining school-education costs, school lunch, and out-of-school activity spending7 |
| 学校教育費 | Gakkō Kyōikuhi | "School education costs," the narrower subset of learning cost limited to tuition, fees, and school-required supplies7 |
| 高等学校等就学支援金 | Kōtō Gakkō-tō Shūgaku Shienkin | The High School Tuition Support Fund, the program that offsets standard tuition at kōritsu, shiritsu, and kokuritsu high schools1013 |
Market Share by School Level
The figures below come from MEXT's School Basic Survey, the same annual census used throughout this article, with confirmed results published December 26, 2025 (as of 2025-05-01; confirm current figures with MEXT).2 Two different units are given because they diverge, especially at university level: share of schools (a count of institutions) and share of students (enrollment).
Cite the specific unit whenever you quote a market-share figure for Japanese schools. At university level, kokuritsu accounts for 20.49% of enrollment but only 10.47% of school count, and shiritsu accounts for 73.79% of enrollment but 76.85% of school count.2 Treating one as a stand-in for the other produces a materially wrong picture.
By enrollment, the split looks like this (as of 2025-05-01):2
| Level | National (kokuritsu) | Public (kōritsu) | Private (shiritsu) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Elementary | 0.60% | 98.04% | 1.36% |
| Junior high | 0.85% | 91.13% | 8.02% |
| High school | 0.28% | 65.00% | 34.73% |
| University | 20.49% | 5.73% | 73.79% |
By school count, the same tiers look different (as of 2025-05-01):2
| Level | National (kokuritsu) | Public (kōritsu) | Private (shiritsu) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Elementary | 0.35% | 98.30% | 1.34% |
| Junior high | 0.68% | 91.40% | 7.92% |
| High school | 0.32% | 71.96% | 27.73% |
| University | 10.47% | 12.68% | 76.85% |
These figures line up with an independently published FY2023 figure for elementary and junior high (private elementary at 1.3% of both schools and students; private junior high at 7.9% of both), drawn from the same School Basic Survey (as of the 2023 school year).7
Where International Schools Fit
International schools generally operate under School Education Act Article 134 as a kakushu gakkō (各種学校, "miscellaneous school"), a legal category entirely outside the kōritsu, shiritsu, and kokuritsu taxonomy.1 That taxonomy only classifies "Article 1 schools" (一条校), the formal category defined in Article 1; kakushu gakkō sits parallel to it, not inside it.1
This is a naming and categorization point only. Costs, curricula, and admission mechanics for international schools are out of scope for this article.
Good to know
Kokuritsu Is Not a Synonym for Kōritsu
The English word "national" reads as roughly equivalent to "public," but Japanese law treats them as two distinct categories. School Education Act Article 2 defines kokuritsu (established by the national government) and kōritsu (established by a local public body) separately; neither is a variant of the other.1
The scale gap reinforces the confusion risk. Kokuritsu accounts for well under 1% of enrollment at every level below university nationwide, 0.60% at elementary, 0.85% at junior high, 0.28% at high school (as of 2025-05-01; confirm current figures with MEXT), while kōritsu accounts for the large majority at those same levels.2
Private-School Density Is a Tokyo Story More Than a Japan Story
Tokyo's private junior high enrollment share runs more than three times the national figure: 26.7% in Tokyo versus 8.0% nationwide, per data attributed to MEXT's School Basic Survey (as of FY2025).5
Exam-taking rates cluster the same way. An estimated 21.5% of the relevant age cohort across greater Tokyo, meaning Tokyo, Kanagawa, Saitama, and Chiba prefectures, sat a private or national middle-school entrance exam in the 2025 admissions cycle, according to cram-school operator Nichinoken's tracking (as of the 2025 admissions cycle).6 That was down from a record high the prior year but still far above rates typical outside the region.
Do not generalize Tokyo juken norms to Japan as a whole. A family's real choice set differs sharply by region: a rural prefecture may have few or no shiritsu options within commuting distance, while dense central-Tokyo districts can see local exam-taking rates well above the citywide average.56
Low National-School Tuition Does Not Mean Easy Admission
Kokuritsu high school tuition sits at or below kōritsu levels, and kokuritsu's compulsory grades charge no tuition at all, the same as kōritsu. Kokuritsu high school's standard tuition is ¥115,200 per year, against kōritsu's ¥118,800 per year standard (as of the current ordinance and nationwide standard amounts).8109
Low cost is not a signal of low selectivity. Admission is exam-based and often includes a lottery stage, with a small number of seats nationwide, 66 elementary schools in total as of 2025-05-01, making a kokuritsu seat harder to obtain in practice than most kōritsu or shiritsu options in the same area.21
See also
- Japan's 6-3-3-4 School System: The Five Tiers Explained
- Compulsory Education in Japan: Rules for Foreign Children
- Japan's School Year: April Start Dates and Terms Explained
- Jūminhyō: Japan's Residence Record Explained
- Welcome to J-Compass: A Long-Term Resident's Guide to Living in Japan