Admissions – KAIS EMS

Step 1: Eligibility Check

Families who wish to enroll their students at KAIS should read through these steps to familiarize themselves with our Admissions Process and its requirements.

Step 2: Contact the Admissions Department

Next, families should contact our admissions department at admissions@kaisems.com to determine availability. If space is available, then a campus visit can be scheduled to introduce our learning environment and provide the necessary application documents. Overseas families may participate in a Zoom chat with our Admissions Director.

Step 3: Enrollment Process

Families who wish to continue with the enrollment process are asked to provide all the required documentation listed below:

Admissions application documents
School transcripts/records from the past two years
Two reference documents from the child’s previous Math and Language Arts (English) teachers
For children requiring special educational support, detailed information regarding their specific learning needs
As a childcare facility requirement, families with a child enrolling in Pre-K or Kindergarten (ages 4-6) must provide: (1) a Pre-Enrollment Medical Check Form (入園前健康状態把握票), and (2) a medical check record by their doctor every six months until they have entered Grade 1.

Note: Failure to declare accurately and fully the extent of a child’s individual learning needs may result in parents being asked to withdraw their child because the school is unable to meet his or her learning needs. To avoid a negative experience for all stakeholders, we ask all families to be open and communicative about any and all details relating to their child’s education and support needs.

Step 4: Document Screening

The admissions department presents all documentation to the school administration and School Counselor for screening in the form of an Admissions File. The Admissions File is systematically reviewed by the Admissions Director, School Counselor, and Heads of School. Should any documents be missing, the process cannot move forward. Previous schools may be contacted for background checks. This process can take up to a week before a decision is reached.

Step 5: Trial Day

Once the documentation has been processed and an initial decision to proceed has been made, the student is invited for a trial day (or half-day for Pre-Kindergarten to Grade 2 students), to be scheduled for a regular school day, to determine whether the learning environment is appropriate for the child, as well as take a Math and Language Arts placement test to determine the child's level and needs.

Step 6: Internal Feedback

Following the trial day, the teaching team is interviewed for their feedback regarding the child’s academic and social performance, focusing on whether or not we think the school is right for them.

Step 7: Final Decision

Following the internal discussion among faculty members, the admissions department is given the approval from the administration to officially welcome the prospective family to the KAIS community.

We encourage and even expect our students to work hard and to do their best. But we are friendly and open with them. Put another way, we are not exactly relaxed, but we are definitely not uptight.
Our faculty are all qualified teachers, with several members being experts in their fields (with master’s degrees or above). And we can’t stress this enough — they all love teaching.
Our school is small enough to allow us to get to know all our students (and their parents) very well. We can recognize their strengths and spot their weaknesses. We can readily see what they need and what they contribute to their classes and the school.
The staff and faculty at KAIS EMS respect and value our students’ individuality even as we encourage them to consider the needs of others.
Our classes and hallways are lively and even noisy at times. Our students love to talk and to express themselves openly and passionately. They love to be involved and feel engaged.
Our students are empowered with choice: choice in projects to work on, choice in elective classes to take, choice in Homework Labs to attend. At the same time, we give them all the guidance they need, especially those students who before they came to us, had not had the guidance they needed and deserved.
We like all our students to be self-starters and go-getters. We encourage them to come up with ideas on their own and then to pursue those ideas as far as they can go.
We invite and applaud curiosity. We encourage our students to ask questions and then to use their skills and the myriad resources available online and elsewhere to find the answers to their questions and to satisfy their curiosity on their own.
We want our students to do their best in sports and performances, but we also encourage them to never forget the importance of joy.
Our students study with a different teacher for every subject. This exposes them to a variety of personalities and teaching styles, and contributes greatly to their understanding of people and the world we live in.
We want all our students to go home every day and tell their parents, “I had a great day at school today!” We believe that learning, even when it’s hard, should be fun.
We believe that school is a place for face-to-face interaction. We don’t allow our students to use their phones at school.
For students learning the fundamentals of the English language, we have an English-only environment to encourages our EAL students to improve their speaking skills as quickly as possible.
Our students are all hip, cool, and kind. Each and every one has a fascinating, unique personality and has interests of his or her very own. They are welcoming to newcomers. They embrace EVERYONE. They are our pride and joy. They are awesome.

While our sports program is evolving and improving, it is unlikely to ever be up to the standards of the larger international schools. We just don’t have the space. If you want your child to attend a school with a robust, competitive sports program, we are probably not for you. That being said, for a school our size, our sports program is very respectable and we make excellent use of the space that we have. We offer swimming lessons at a nearby sports and fitness center, and we have frequent morning workouts that keep our students in tip-top shape both physically and mentally (and we like to play a lot of table tennis and four square). At any rate, as far as sports are concerned, our focus is on the opportunities for personal growth that sports present rather than on the sports in and of themselves.
If your child prefers to “hang back” and blend into the background, he or she may struggle at a school like ours. Our small classes mean that every child is noticed and stands out. We all, students, staff, and teachers alike, know one another. We “hang out” with and speak to one another every day. That’s part of the friendly, family-like, fun atmosphere that defines us. But again, it is also not everyone’s cup of tea.
We are very proud of our Japanese program, but we also know that it is unrealistic for us to expect a child in our program to develop his or her Japanese-language skills at the same rate as a child attending a Japanese school. Some international schools devote several hours a day to Japanese, and for some families, these would be the best option. But at KAIS EMS, our first priority is English. We have, therefore, made the conscious decision to focus on English five hours a day; only two classes per week are devoted to Japanese. This ensures that our students are fully proficient and fluent in one language and fairly advanced in another. Parents of students at our school who want their children to be “perfect” in Japanese are advised to have their children attend a cram school or spend part of their vacations in a Japanese school.
Though we respect all religions and their adherents, KAIS EMS is a secular school. We do not reject or edit works of literature or other texts based on religious considerations. In our science classes, we teach "Darwinian" evolution. Thus, parents who do not want their children exposed to the western literary canon or to scientific ideas that challenge or oppose orthodox religious thinking should consider one of the many religion-based international schools that are available in Tokyo. Please note, however, that if their parents request it, we do allow students to skip out of some workshops (sex education, for example). We are quite flexible about such things and do all we can — again, within reason — to make everyone feel at home and their ideas and beliefs respected.

Thank you for considering KAIS EMS!

Application Process