In recent years, the number of local governments considering remote delivery classes has been gradually increasing. There are 179 cities, towns, and villages and 186 prefectural high schools in Hokkaido. 55% of the 186 prefectural high schools are small schools with 1-3 classes per grade. Small high schools may not have the subjects that students want. The Hokkaido High School Remote Class Delivery Center (T base) is working to solve these problems. T base was established at Hokkaido Aritomo High School in 2021. It is run by 25 full-time teachers, headed by the principal. In 2025, 30 subjects in 9 subjects are being delivered. There are 32 receiving schools, and a total of about 900 students are taking the classes. During T base classes, there are teachers and staff at the receiving schools who assist students. In the 2025 entrance exam, students from the receiving school have been able to pass the entrance exam to Hokkaido University.
Learning support seems to be a success in private companies. Konica Minolta has developed a generative AI system for schools and has been conducting demonstration experiments. Currently, we are building an environment that a total of about 160,000 students and teachers attending elementary, junior high, and high schools can use generative AI. Konica is utilizing this know-how and working with the Tokyo Metropolitan Government to implement it in the field of education. Konica has announced that it will provide generative artificial intelligence services to Tokyo Metropolitan schools. Accounts will be granted to teachers and students so that they can use the service. Teachers will be able to reduce the effort of creating drills for students’ home study and the burden of supporting each person’s study. Teachers can check each student’s learning status on a dashboard on the cloud. This AI service has performance equal to or greater than the GPT-40mini provided by OpenAI in the United States. Konica Minolta’s service is excellent because it can be proposed according to the student’s proficiency level.
The number of people wishing to receive remote lessons is increasing every year. Correspondence high schools are showing a similar trend. While the number of students in full-time and part-time high schools is decreasing, the number of students attending correspondence high schools is increasing. Correspondence high schools are run on three pillars: schooling, reports, and exams. It seems that correspondence high schools also have accumulated knowledge of learning support. There are similarities between distance classes, which are increasing in full-time schools, and correspondence schools. Improvements in ICT equipment, which forms the basis of distance classes, are progressing rapidly. Fortunately, it seems that the receiving schools in Hokkaido are offering custom-made classes for each student. The results seem to be linked to the success of students being accepted into national universities while still in high school. We would like to keep an eye on their future results.
