CreateBase — Choosing a School
An honest comparison of the two dominant models in Japan's junior high entrance exam industry — written from a school that fits in neither category.
"Which cram school should we use?" — for many parents starting their child's preparation for Japan's junior high entrance exams, this is the first major decision point. CreateBase sits in a position that is neither a major chain nor a conventional individual-tutoring shop. That gives us a vantage point from which to look at both honestly, without needing to defend either.
Starting at a major cram school is not a bad choice. The strength of the large operators lies in their stability.
Same lesson, very different results
The curriculum at a major cram school is optimized for the group, not the individual. Personal weaknesses and strengths are not really addressed. Homework volume is enormous. Trying to complete all of it cuts into sleep, and the resulting fatigue actually drops the quality of learning further.
This structural ceiling is part of why we built our own approach. See our piece on why this system exists for the full reasoning.
"We hit a wall at the major school, so we moved to individual tutoring." This is a common story. But individual tutoring is highly variable in quality, more so than the major operators.
Curriculum can be flexibly adjusted to the student's understanding and weak subjects. The tutor's attention is on one child at a time. Scheduling is flexible.
Quality varies wildly. Costs run high. There is no peer competition. The actual contribution to admission is hard to measure objectively.
Major schools are low-risk, low-return. Individual is high-risk, high-return.
If you find a strong tutor, your child can pull dramatically ahead of peers using major chains. If you don't, you spend a great deal of money and time for very little.
Knowing in advance which individual tutoring is good and which is not is essentially impossible. Lessons happen behind closed doors between one tutor and one child — there is no way to inspect them from outside.
The two patterns of online reviews most worth taking seriously:
Five things worth checking during a trial lesson:
An individual tutoring shop charging ¥10,000 per hour, fully booked for 25 lessons a week, generates roughly ¥1 million per month in revenue. After rent, utilities, materials, and advertising, what remains is much less than people imagine. Once finances tighten, the survival of the business starts to outrank the quality of the lessons.
How to identify a financially stable individual tutoring shop
| Pattern | Description |
|---|---|
| ① Major school only | Stable. Competitive environment is built in. Low risk, moderate return. |
| ② Major + individual (most common) | Major handles the breadth, individual reinforces weak points and strengthens strengths. When done well, strong synergy. When the content overlaps, time and money are wasted. |
| ③ Individual only (or multiple individuals) | Maximum customization. Hardest to manage. Highest variance in outcome. |
Combinations that produce no synergy
Receiving the same explanation at a second school that was just covered at the first. Two schools whose content overlaps. Adding more schools at the cost of the child's own self-study and review time. All of these make things worse, not better.
Signs worth taking as triggers:
One caution: switching schools can quietly become its own goal. Switching schools in the second half of the final year carries a high adaptation cost. The realistic move is to first identify exactly what is missing, then take the smallest step that addresses it. As we discuss in our piece on junior high entrance exams and educational abuse, the structural pressure to escalate intensity needs to be questioned before it is acted on.
| Option | Risk / Return | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Major cram school | Low / Moderate | Stable, safe. Moderate competitive edge. |
| Individual tutoring (good) | Low / High | Best case. Targeted reinforcement of weaknesses. |
| Individual tutoring (poor) | High / Low | Worst case. Time and money disappear with no return. |
| Major + individual (with synergy) | Low–Moderate / High | The ideal combination when roles are clearly divided. |
Trial sessions and pre-enrollment consultations are available year-round.