News

Bankruptcy of Geos blamed on shrinking market for English conversation schools

by

The bankruptcy of major English school operator Geos Corp. is largely attributable to the shrinking market for English conversation schools in Japan, as a result of the declining birth rate and the economic downturn.

“The entire industry has been in a slump, and we lost a large number of students because of the recession,” Kazumi Suhara, a board member of Geos told a news conference on Wednesday as she explained the cause of the bankruptcy.

The market began to expand rapidly about 30 years ago, and a large number of English conversation schools were opened in urban areas.

Geos rapidly expanded its network of English conversation schools by aggressively airing TV commercials.

However, the competition between English schools has been intense in recent years as the number of students declined due to the recession following the bursting of the speculation-driven, asset-inflating bubble economy and a decline in the population of students and schoolchildren.

NOVA, another major English school operator, went under in October 2007.

In the same month, the maximum amount of government subsidies for those who take lessons at English schools, which contributed to the English-learning boom, was lowered from 200,000 yen a year to 100,000 yen.

As a result, the number of students at English conversation schools nationwide decreased from approximately 750,000 in February 2007 to about 360,000 a year later.

The collapse of U.S. financial giant Lehman Brothers in the autumn of 2008 dealt a further blow to the industry.

“Households have lost the leeway to pay for language classes and other lessons,” says an executive with a major bank.

The number of students at Geos, which stood at some 40,000 as of the end of September 2008, had fallen to about 36,800 by the time it collapsed, according to Teikoku Data Bank.

The company fell into a vicious circle of deep cuts in advertising expenses causing the number of those who sign up for lessons at Geos to decline, according to Suhara.

Its study abroad program also contributed to its bankruptcy. A subsidiary in Australia had its visa revoked in December last year because of a shortage of funds, and was forced to close all its eight schools in the country.

“It worsened the already severe financial situation,” says lawyer Nobuaki Kobayashi, who serves as bankruptcy receiver for Geos.

G.Communication Group, which is set to take control of Geos’ schools, has been successful in reviving NOVA, which it also took over, by streamlining its operations. Specifically, it relocated its NOVA schools to the premises of cram schools it operates and took other cost-cutting measures.

Nevertheless, few are optimistic about the future of English schools as they face growing competition from online schools, such as one that allows students to take online lessons from Filipino teachers — whose wages are comparatively low — and costs only 8,000 yen a month.

It remains to be seen if G.Communication will be able to put Geos and NOVA on a path to stable growth.

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/perspectives/news/20100422p2a00m0na001000c.html

Geos Files For Bankruptcy

by

Geos Corp. said Wednesday it has filed for bankruptcy protection with the Tokyo District Court, saddled with debts of about 7.5 billion yen.

The operator of English conversation schools will hand over 230 schools in Japan to subsidiary G.communication Co. The rest will be closed.

G.communication, which took over schools from Nova Corp. in 2007 when the latter went under, manages about 470 English conversation schools.

http://e.nikkei.com/e/fr/tnks/Nni20100421D21SS663.htm

Major English school operator Geos goes bankrupt

by

Major English school operator Geos Corp. filed for bankruptcy on Wednesday at the Tokyo District Court with liabilities of about 7.5 billion yen, company officials said.

Tokyo-based Geos operated 329 schools that had approximately 36,800 students. Nagoya-based G.Communication Group is set to take over 230 of the schools with some 29,000 students, while 99 other schools will be closed down.

All Geos schools will be closed on Wednesday and Thursday, and schools taken over by G.Communications will be reopened from Friday.

Geos officials said students who have already paid tuition fees will be able to continue to learn at nearby Geos schools without paying any extra charges.

Students who live in areas where there is no Geos school can attend lessons at NOVA schools, also operated by G.Communications, if they pay extra charges. However, they cannot get back tuition they have already paid.

Geos was founded in 1986. It operated English conversation schools across the country while offering overseas study and homestay programs.

However, its subsidiary in Australia closed all its schools in February after getting into financial trouble. The number of students had since decreased sharply because of a loss of confidence and intensifying competition in the industry.

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20100421p2a00m0na023000c.html

Wife presses for details in death of deportee

by

The Japanese wife of a Ghanaian who died last month while he was being deported for overstaying his visa called Tuesday on police and the Immigration Bureau to disclose exactly how he died.

“I want the government to unveil the truth as soon as possible to prevent a recurrence of similar incidents,” the wife of the deceased man, Abubakar Awudu Suraj, told journalists at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan in Tokyo.

The FCCJ agreed not to reveal the wife’s name.

Police said Suraj was confirmed dead in a hospital March 22 after an undisclosed number of immigration officers overpowered him when he became violent in an airplane before it departed Narita International Airport that day for Cairo.

The wife’s lawyer, Koichi Kodama, questioned the police investigation, which has not resulted in any arrests.

“If a man died after five or six civilians, not public servants, held his limbs, they would undoubtedly be arrested,” Kodama said, adding he told “exactly that to the prosecutors” he met with Monday in Chiba.

The Chiba police are questioning about 10 immigration officers and crew of Egypt Air, Kodama quoted a Chiba prosecutor as saying. Police said March 25 the cause of death was unclear after an autopsy. Kodama said a more thorough autopsy is being performed.

Suraj’s wife is considering suing the government, but she and Kodama are holding off pending further evidence of malpractice by immigration officers.

“Lawyers have no authority to collect evidence, and thus we have to wait for police to disclose evidence,” he said.

According to Mayumi Yoshida, the assistant general secretary of Asian People’s Friendship Society, she and Suraj’s wife went to the Justice Ministry, which oversees the Immigration Bureau, on March 25 to ask the ministry for details of how Suraj died.

Yoshida quoted a ministry official as saying immigration officers “seem to have used a towel for (Suraj’s) mouth and a handcuff.”

“That is all we know” about how Suraj died, she said.

Suraj came to Japan on a temporary visa, which expired in 15 days, in May 1988, according to Yoshida. He was arrested on suspicion of staying illegally in September 2006, and received a deportation order in November that year. The same month, his wife registered their marriage.

In February 2008, the Tokyo District Court ruled the deportation order be waived. But in March 2009, the Tokyo High Court repealed the district court’s ruling on grounds the couple was childless and the wife was economically independent, Yoshida said.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100421a4.html

Worker health checks to cover depression

by

The health ministry plans to make mental health checks mandatory in regular health examinations given at the workplace, health minister Akira Nagatsuma said Monday.

The step is aimed at preventing depression and suicide, problems that have been making headlines in recent years, he said.

A ministry task force, formed in January, is expected to propose adding mental health checkups in its interim report to be released soon.

The ministry will consider revising the Industrial Safety and Health Law or related ministry ordinances.

Businesses are required under the law to give their employees at least one health examination a year. Those violating the law are subject to a fine of up to 500,000 yen ($5,450).

Related rules require blood pressure, liver function and blood sugar checks to be included, but there is no clear stipulation about mental health examinations.

In fiscal 2008, 927 applications for workers’ compensation were filed for depression and other mental ailments, of which 269 were approved.

The number of applications was more than four times greater than in fiscal 2000 and that of approved cases was seven times greater than in the same period, according to the ministry.

http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201004200336.html

Foreigner suffrage opponents rally

by

Conservative politicians express outrage at DPJ plan

Conservative intellectuals and key executives from five political parties were among the thousands who gathered in Tokyo on Saturday to rally against granting foreign residents voting rights for local elections.

On hand were financial services minister Shizuka Kamei, who heads Kokumin Shinto (People’s New Party), Liberal Democratic Party Secretary General Tadamori Oshima, former trade minister Takeo Hiranuma, who recently launched his own political party, Tachiagare Nippon (Sunrise Party of Japan), and Your Party leader Yoshimi Watanabe.

Jin Matsubara, a Lower House member from the ruling Democratic Party of Japan, also attended.

According to the organizer, a total of 10,257 people attended the convention at the Nippon Budokan arena in Chiyoda Ward, including representatives of prefectural assemblies and citizens from across the nation.

Oshima, the LDP’s No. 2, promised that “in the name of protecting the nation’s sovereignty” the largest opposition party would do everything in its power to prevent such a bill from being enacted.

Your Party chief Watanabe accused the DPJ of using the suffrage issue to lure New Komeito, which supports foreigners’ local election rights, before the upcoming Upper House election. “This is nothing but an election ploy by the DPJ,” he claimed.

In an opening speech preceded by the singing of the “Kimigayo” national anthem, Atsuyuki Sassa, former head of the Cabinet Security Affairs Office and chief organizer of the event, expressed his concern about granting foreigners suffrage.

“I was infuriated when I heard of plans to submit to the Diet a government-sponsored bill giving foreign residents voting rights,” he said.

“Our Constitution grants those with Japanese nationality voting rights in return for their obligation to pay taxes,” he said. “Granting suffrage to those without Japanese nationality is clearly a mistake in national policy.”

Sassa also pointed out that 35 prefectures have adopted statements against granting foreigners suffrage, up from less than half that number in January.

“Our local governments clearly do not desire granting suffrage to foreigners,” he said.

DPJ heavyweights Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and Secretary General Ichiro Ozawa are advocates of giving foreigners the right to vote at the local level, and the party has been preparing to craft the legislation it has been calling for since the party’s launch in 1998.

But the government scrapped a plan to submit the bill during the current Diet session after encountering fierce opposition from the financial services minister.

Taking the podium to a round of applause, Kamei emphasized his party’s role in preventing the government from submitting the bill to the Diet, and said that “it was obvious that granting suffrage will destroy Japan.”

Kamei, who has in the past argued that giving foreigners voting rights could incite nationalism during polling, went so far as to declare that his party would leave the ruling coalition if the government submitted the bill to the Diet.

Foreign nationals cannot vote in national or local elections, and changing the law has long been a controversial issue, particularly under the administrations of the LDP, whose conservative ranks have argued against granting suffrage, insisting that permanent foreign residents must first become naturalized citizens.

As of the end of 2008, 912,400 foreign nationals were registered with the government as permanent residents. Among them, 420,300 were special permanent residents, including Koreans and Taiwanese who lived in Japan before and during the war and were forced to take Japanese nationality, and their descendants. The remainder are general permanent residents.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100418a1.html

英語指導助手：千葉県柏市で「偽装請負」認定　授業できず

by

千葉県柏市の市立小中学校全６１校で３月末まで英語を教えていた外国人の指導助手（ＡＬＴ）２３人について、厚生労働省千葉労働局が、業務請負契約なのに学校の指揮下で働いていたとして１３日付で違法な「偽装請負」と認定した。是正指導を受けた市教委が１６日発表した。これにより、学校はＡＬＴの授業が新年度始められない事態に直面。同様の実態は全国的に多数あるとみられ、影響が広がる可能性がある。

Read more

Chiba city’s native speaker English classes canceled after ALT contracts found illegal

by

Public schools here have been unable to start their native speaker-taught English classes this school year after the city’s board of education was accused of violating labor laws with foreign language teachers.

According to the Kashiwa Municipal Board of Education, it has been instructed by the local labor office to change its labor relationship with foreign assistant language teachers (ALTs) in the city’s elementary and junior high schools after it engaged in illegal employment practices.

The local education board entrusted part of its English curriculum for primary and secondary school students to a Tokyo-based staffing agency between 2007 and 2009, and a total of 23 foreign teachers belonging to the agency worked as ALTs at 61 local public elementary and junior high schools during this period. Their contracts expired at the end of last month.

A local labor union supporting foreign language teachers complained to the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry’s Chiba labor office that the teachers were forced to work as temporary workers under the guise of subcontractors, while demanding the municipality extend their contract periods.

In response to the complaint, the labor office launched an investigation and confirmed that each school placed the foreign teachers under its direct supervision even though they worked under consigning contracts. The labor office then concluded that the education board forced the teachers to work as temporary workers under the guise of subcontractors, a practice that constitutes a violation of the Worker Dispatching Act.

Under the current law, companies and other business operators must offer a direct contract to their temporary workers after they have completed the first three years of work. Moreover, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare’s labor guidelines require a minimum three-month interval before the two parties enter into another temporary contract.

The city’s board of education had planned to terminate its English class teacher outsourcing contract and employ temporary English teachers directly starting this April. However, as the labor office judged that the education board had already forced its contracted foreign teachers to work as normal temporary staff, it became impossible for the city to renew the contracts right away, in accordance with the ministry guidelines prohibiting consecutive temporary contracts of over three years.

The local education board has announced that it will comply with the labor office’s order and will resume relevant English classes after the three-month waiting period expirees in July.

In August last year, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology instructed local boards of education nationwide to switch consigning contracts for ALTs to either direct or temporary employment. A subsequent survey by the ministry has revealed that 670 municipalities still maintained their outsourcing arrangements for native English class teachers, of which 439 responded they were not planning to change their current practices.

The ministry’s International Education Division has requested each education board consult with their local labor office and make corrections as needed.

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20100417p2a00m0na019000c.html

Japanese population declines by record 180,000 to 127.51 mil.

by

Japan’s estimated population decreased for the second year in a row, declining by a record 183,000, or 0.14 percent, from a year earlier to 127,510,000 as of Oct. 1, 2009, government data showed Friday.

By prefecture, Tokyo, Kanagawa, Saitama, Chiba, Aichi, Shiga and Okinawa saw population increases as they did in 2008.

Okinawa saw the largest year-on-year increase with a 0.45 percent rise to 1,382,000.

Tokyo remained the most populous region with 12,868,000 people as of Oct. 1, accounting for 10.1 percent of Japan’s total population. Tokyo was followed by Kanagawa with 8,943,000 and Osaka with 8,801,000.

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20100417p2g00m0dm036000c.html

Population shrank by record 183,000 in ’09

by

Japan’s population has entered full-scale decline and shrank by a record 183,000 people over the past year, government data showed Friday.

As of Oct. 1, the population stood at an estimated 127,510,000 after shrinking by a record 0.14 percent, contracting for the second year in a row.

The year-on-year drop is the third to strike Japan since 1950, when comparable data first became available, the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry said in the report. The other two shrinkages occurred in 2005, when it fell by 19,000, or 0.01 percent, and in 2008, when it contracted by 79,000, or 0.06 percent.

Japan’s population has entered a stage of full-scale decline as both men and women recorded natural decreases, ministry officials said.

The figures in the latest report included foreigners who stayed in Japan for 91 days or more and foreign students. The number of Japanese came to 125,820,000, revealing a decline of 127,000, or 0.10 percent.

The number of people who entered Japan totaled 3,114,000, up 250,000 from the previous year, while those who left the country stood at 3,237,000, up 329,000, meaning that social factors caused the total population to shrink by 124,000.

Of the 124,000, foreigners accounted for 47,000, marking the first decline in 15 years linked to social factors.

The officials attributed the decline in the foreign population to the recession triggered by the collapse of trading house Lehman Brothers in the fall of 2008.

Many foreigners lost their jobs and returned to their home countries as the financial crisis unfolded, the officials said.

The number of people aged 65 and older came to 29,005,000, up by 789,000 and accounting for 22.7 percent of the population.

In contrast, those aged 14 or younger fell by 165,000 to 17,011,000. The productive segment of the population, or those between the ages of 15 and 64, came to an estimated total of 81,493,000, shrinking by 806,000.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100417a1.html