Our History
AIS’s predecessor Nagoya International Preschool (NIP) opened in 2000. NIP itself came about from the high reputation received for the English childcare curriculum offered at Child Academy Kamiyashiro, a Ministry of Health subsidized model childcare facility which opened in front of station in March 1993.
The childcare facility was subsequently established in July 2006 as CAI, a social welfare corporation. The Nagoya City-approved Kamiyashiro Childcare relocated to a new site to the northwest of the station.
These childcare and preschool facilities are based upon the international management ideals of Screenplay Inc., which began publishing complete bilingual movie scenario books in 1988. The company’s series of books drew much attention as useful material for learning conversational English at a time of rapidly growing globalization in Japan.
From early on, the group considered education for fostering global citizens with native level English proficiency from a young age would be indispensable for Japan to take its place within the world in the 21st century.
Although AIS includes the word ‘international’ within its name, it is by no means an ‘American’ style international school which sacrifices attainment of the Japanese language – AIS places great importance on Japanese citizens retaining their national identity. The acquisition of two languages is merely part of the aim to become bilingual.
AIS was founded to foster bilingual Japanese children in classes with low teacher to student ratios, and originally planned to become a school prescribed in Article 1 of the School Education Act of Japan. However, AIS gave up becoming authorized by the local government, mainly due to the room sizes ideally suited to small student ratios not fulfilling the strict standards in place for large student number public schools. Instead, AIS applied for and was granted accreditation for K to G4 in 2008 by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC), based in the United States. As part of the WASC self-study process, AIS welcomed a Visiting Committee of WASC representatives in November 2013. As a result of this visit, AIS is currently accredited from K to G6; ie. the whole school program. AIS underwent a full re-accreditation visit in February 2020. Please refer to the following link to read the school’s self-study report; ACS-WASC-FOL AIS Self-Study 2020
In March 2012, the first students graduated from the elementary school at AIS. In the years since, the number of graduates has been increasing, with 56 students going on to international junior high schools in Japan, prestigious private Japanese junior high schools and public junior high schools as of April 2021.