Weekend School Clubs Move to the Community by FY2031, While Weekdays Carry Neither Target Nor Deadline — What the Shift From Transfer to Delivery Left Behind

The Japan Sports Agency and the Agency for Cultural Affairs issued new guidelines for school club reform on 22 December 2025[1]. Public lower secondary schools are the main subject.

The reform runs in three phases. FY2023 to FY2025 as the preparation period, FY2026 to FY2028 as the first half of the implementation period, and FY2029 to FY2031 as the second half[2].

For weekends, the goal is written plainly.

Within the implementation period, community delivery is to be achieved, as a rule, for every school club

The scope is every school club; the deadline is the end of fiscal 2031. Authorities that have not started are to do so with certainty during the first half.

For weekdays, the text reads:

Reform is to be advanced further while resolving various issues (first, the national government will examine what forms of activity are feasible)

No scope of schools and no deadline. It sits at the stage of the national government examining what is feasible.

The wording moved from transfer to extension

The vocabulary changed too. What used to be called transfer to the community is, in this guideline, extension into the community.

Transfer means the party responsible changes hands: the school stops, the community starts. Extension means widening. It can include keeping school clubs while also building activity in the community.

The guideline lists both extension and cooperation as types of approach, with a note that diverse reforms suited to local circumstances matter, including cooperation with the community built on school clubs[3].

Difficult areas are given a different route

The weekend line carries a proviso. Where extension into the community is difficult, such as in mountainous areas or on islands, the deployment of club activity instructors is to be promoted for the time being[3].

Every school club is in scope, and places that cannot do it have another route. A club activity instructor is external staff placed in the school, which is not the same mechanism as a community club.

The municipality is the responsible party

Responsibility is stated. Municipalities are the responsible party for the reform; the state presents the policy approach, supports and informs local government, and prefectures provide leadership[3].

Municipalities are asked to establish a dedicated section and appoint a coordinator[3]. Securing operators and instructors and arranging venues and transport also fall to them.

The difficulties are set out in six items

The guideline itself lists what is hard. Six items are set out with concrete measures: building the capacity of operators and delivery bodies, securing and developing instructors, securing venues including effective use of school facilities, securing transport, ensuring student safety, and securing activity opportunities for students with disabilities[3].

Instructors, venues, transport. All of them already existed inside the school. Move the activity out and each has to be arranged again.

The accreditation scheme has seven requirements

A new accreditation scheme is established. Municipalities accredit community club activities against requirements set by the state; a club applies, the municipality examines and accredits, and the municipality continues to advise thereafter[3]. Accredited activities are called accredited community club activities.

There are seven requirements. (1) purpose and philosophy, including carrying forward the educational significance of school clubs and accepting broadly any student who wishes to take part without selection; (2) activity time and rest days, being roughly two hours a day on weekdays, roughly three on non-school days, with at least two rest days a week; (3) participation fees; (4) instruction arrangements; (5) safety; (6) governance; and (7) liaison with schools[3].

The detail matters. Requirement (4) covers preventing abuse, verbal abuse, harassment and bullying, including use of the Japanese version of DBS, and instruction by registered instructors who have completed municipal training, with a registration scheme for accredited community club instructors to be built. Requirement (5) covers injury cover and personal liability insurance for participants and instructors. Requirement (6) covers written rules published openly, fair and proper accounting, and operation not primarily for profit[3].

Accreditation carries four effects

The effects are listed too. (1) information provided to students and guardians by the municipality; (2) public support for operations, including funding, priority use and fee reductions for school facilities, and use of school equipment; (3) dual employment for teachers wishing to take part; and (4) smooth participation by students in competitions and contests[3].

Without accreditation, none of the four applies. Priority use of facilities, fee reductions and competition entry all run through it.

Note also that a community club activity run by the municipality itself is deemed accredited if it meets the state's requirements[3], that accreditation lasts up to three years, set by the municipality according to local circumstances[3], and that transitional arrangements run, in principle, to the end of FY2026[3].

The wording separates what was settled from what was deferred

Set the two lines side by side and it is clear what this reform settled and what it put off.

Weekends were settled. Every school club is in scope and the deadline falls within the reform implementation period. It is in a form that can be counted.

Weekdays were deferred, placed at the stage of the state verifying what is feasible. When that verification ends, and what follows, is not written.

The harder half went to the back

There is a reason for the difference. Weekend activity sits outside teachers' working hours and is easier for a community body to run. Weekday activity sits after school, inside the school's premises and timetable. Students finish lessons and go straight into it. Transport is needed. Securing instructors on a weekday evening is far harder than at a weekend.

The harder half went to the back. As sequencing that is realistic; measured against teachers' workload it means weekday club activity stays where it is for now. If weekends move out and weekdays stay, the supervising teacher's role does not disappear.

A mid-term evaluation sits between the halves

The period is structured too. A mid-term evaluation sits between the first half of the implementation period, FY2026 to FY2028, and the second half, FY2029 to FY2031[3].

Weekend extension begins in the first half, then the mid-term evaluation, then the second half. How the weekday verification is handled there is not yet decided.

There is no figure for fees, but the state is to give a guide

Then there is cost. School clubs have always charged for kit and materials, but the cost of the teacher supervising and of the school premises came out of public funds. In a community club, the operator pays instructors, rents space and takes out insurance. That money comes from membership fees.

The fee requirement reads: participation fees are to be set as low as possible within the range necessary to maintain and run the activity, having regard to a guide indicated by the state[3].

No figure appears in this summary, but the state is to indicate a guide. Activity time has two hours, three hours and two days a week; fees have no number yet. That is not the same as deciding to publish no number.

What that guide comes out at will decide the size of the regional variation below.

Making the municipality responsible is what drives regional variation

Here the design of responsibility bites. An authority with fiscal room can subsidise. One without it leaves the fee to fall on households. Under one system, what a family pays depends on where they live.

That funding and fee reductions sit among the effects of accreditation pushes the same way. The municipality accredits, and the municipality funds.

A price appears on what public money used to cover

When a price appears on what public funds used to cover, the people who cannot pay it drop out first. The structure of non-take-up can arise here too.

The guideline states as its philosophy building an environment in which all students, including those with disabilities and those who find sport or cultural activity difficult, can take part in a wide variety of activities according to their wishes[3], and requirement (1) includes accepting broadly any student who wishes to take part, without selection[3].

Not selecting at the entrance became a requirement. Not dropping out over cost did not.

It reaches as far as high school admissions

Related arrangements are being changed too. Facilitating dual employment for teachers who wish to take part, covering not only lower secondary teachers but primary teachers specialising in physical education and teachers at high schools and special needs schools; giving weight to club instruction ability in personnel and recruitment decisions; and the treatment of club activity in high school admissions[3].

High school admissions appear because activity in a community club has to be recorded somewhere on a school report. If school clubs and community clubs are treated differently, students will work backwards from the admissions process when choosing.

What has to be counted before the next decision

How the choice of indicator drives the result is the problem covered in designing outcome indicators（このサイトの記事）; here the gap between the area given a deadline and the area not given one is likely to become the gap in progress.

Two things are missing for a judgement.

The first is when the weekday verification ends. The text says only that the state will first verify what is feasible. No deadline, and no statement that the mid-term evaluation covers it.

The second is actual fee levels and how many students drop out over them. The state is to indicate a guide, but nothing in the design counts what the fees turn out to be or how many students stopped taking part because of them.

On teachers' working conditions, 1,319 teachers left because of mental illness, the highest on record（このサイトの記事） showed that nothing moves unless the total load falls. How much it falls with only weekends moved out will not be known until the mid-term evaluation in FY2028.

Further Reading

• 『教育格差 — 階層・地域・学歴』 (Educational Inequality: Class, Region, Attainment)（外部サイト、新しいタブで開きます） (Ryoji Matsuoka, Chikuma Shobo). A data-based examination of how family and locality divide educational opportunity. Useful for thinking through how fees and regional variation land on pupils.

References

Comprehensive Guidelines on School Club Reform and the Promotion of Community Club Activities — Japan Sports Agency and Agency for Cultural Affairs (2025). Japan Sports Agency

Summary of the Comprehensive Guidelines on School Club Reform and the Promotion of Community Club Activities — Japan Sports Agency and Agency for Cultural Affairs (2025). Japan Sports Agency

School Club Reform Portal — Japan Sports Agency (2026). Japan Sports Agency