In April 2025, the Aichi Prefectural Board of Education will open four new types of high schools called "flexible high schools" that will provide an easy learning environment for students with diverse learning needs, including those with a history of school dropout. The board will also open a night school to accommodate foreign students who need Japanese language instruction and those who have been unable to attend junior high school due to school dropout reasons.
According to the Aichi Prefectural Board of Education, the new type of high schools are Saya High School in Aisai City, Taketoyo High School in Taketoyo Town, Toyono High School in Toyota City, and Mitsu Aoba High School in Toyokawa City. Saya High School will have full-time agriculture and home economics courses, and daytime part-time and correspondence general courses, while Taketoyo High School, Toyono High School, and Mitsu Aoba High School will have full-time, daytime part-time, and correspondence general courses, respectively. All four schools will have a capacity of 4 students per grade for the daytime part-time general course and around 1 for the correspondence general course.
The feature of the "Flexible High School" is that it has three courses within the high school: full-time, part-time, and correspondence, and students can move between them flexibly. The existing full-time courses have been reorganized into a "credit system" that allows students to freely choose subjects based on their interests and learn at their own pace. In addition, a small-scale daytime part-time course and a correspondence course will be newly established side by side, and in principle, schooling for the correspondence course will be held on weekdays (students can come to school on days when there are no schooling hours to ask teachers questions or study on their own). In addition, a "concurrent enrollment" system allows students to "transfer" to another course and continue studying at the same school, allowing them to take subjects in a course other than the one they are currently enrolled in and earn credits.
For example, if a student enrolled in a correspondence course aims to go to university by taking advantage of the "dual study" system, in their first year they will attend school one day a week, and on days when they don't have school they will work on report assignments at their own pace, or come to school to ask questions about report assignments and study on their own. Once they have become accustomed to attending school, in their second year they will take part in correspondence course classes as well as daytime regular course subjects, giving them the opportunity to interact with other students. In their third year they will take full-time course subjects in preparation for going to university, and in their free time they will work on correspondence course assignments and preparation. This is an example of how they can imagine their studies, where they attend school every day and graduate in three years.
Kanagawa Prefecture also has a high school with a system similar to the "Flexible High School." Yokohama Sakurayo High School was the first in the country to open as a "Flexible School" in 2003, followed by Kawasaki High School in 2004 and Atsugi Seinan High School in 2005. Currently, Kawasaki High School has a credit system that allows full-time students to take night classes and part-time students to take morning classes, while Atsugi Seinan High School is the only school in the country to offer an integrated three-course system that adds a correspondence course to its full-time and part-time courses.
