Thank you for considering KAIS International School!

Application Process

Inquire Now     Apply Now

 

We love to share about our Elementary & Middle School! You can get to know KAIS International School by attending an online information session, setting up a personal virtual family meeting, or visiting on a school tour. 

Online Information Sessions

We hold regularly scheduled 45-minute presentations on KAIS International School’s mission, vision, curriculum, student life with a focus on our Elementary & Middle School (Grades PK-8) throughout the year. You can register for an online information session using this Registration Form or by contacting admissions@kaisems.com.

Virtual Family Meetings

If you can’t make an online information session or would prefer to have a more in-depth conversation about your child, you can set up an individual virtual meeting with our Admissions Director. Please contact admissions@kaisems.com to schedule a virtual meeting. 

School Tours

We schedule 45-minute school tours at our Elementary & Middle School campus on Mondays, Tuesdays, or Wednesdays for interested families. This can be an individual or group tour. Individual tours provide an opportunity to have a more focused conversation about your child. We are located in Tokyo, Meguro-ku, Nakane 1-6-8, a quick 1-minute walk from Toritsudaigaku Station on the Toyoko line. Please contact admissions@kaisems.com to schedule a school tour.

Begin the application process by creating your account on Alma, our student information and management system.

Apply Now

Should you have any questions, comments, or requests, please don't hesitate to reach out directly to our Admission Director for support at: admissions@kaisems.com

Once your Alma account has been created, now it's time to begin the enrollment application. As you move forward with the process, our Admissions Director will oversee your progress and provide support as needed.

During this step, you will be 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 Examination form, and (2) a medical check record by their doctor every six months until they have entered Grade 1.

Please kindly note that 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.

Your completed application will then be reviewed and screened by our admissions committee, which includes the Admissions Director, the School Counselor, and the school leadership team. Please note that should any documents be missing, the process cannot move forward.

Once all documents have been reviewed and an initial decision to proceed has been made, the student is invited to school for a trial day (or half-day for Pre-Kindergarten to Grade 2 students), to be scheduled on 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.

Following the trial day, our team of educators discusses the child’s academic and social performance, focusing on whether or not we think the school would be a right for the child. Should a positive outcome be reached, the child's acceptance to KAIS is then communicated to the family by email, after which our team prepares to officially (and warmly!) welcome a new member to our school community.

Tuition and Fees

Pre-K to Grade 2
¥2,129,000
Base Tuition
Trip & Event Fee (non-refundable): ¥40,000
Registration Fee (one-time, non-refundable): ¥350,000
Building Maintenance Fee (one-time, non-refundable): ¥200,000
Inquire NowInquire Now

Grade 3 to 8
¥2,179,000
Base Tuition
Trip & Event Fee (non-refundable): ¥90,000
Registration Fee (one-time, non-refundable): ¥350,000
Building Maintenance Fee (one-time, non-refundable): ¥200,000
Inquire NowInquire Now

Some (Very Good) Reasons to Enroll Your Child at KAIS EMS

  • 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.

 

Some Reasons for Not Attending KAIS EMS

  • 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.