WAYS to Host Free Osaka Umeda Seminar on Balancing Regular Exams and Eiken® for Integrated Secondary School Students

Mates Inc. (Head office: Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo; Representative Director: Naonori Endo), operator of WAYS, a private tutoring school specializing in integrated junior and senior high school students, will hold a free seminar for parents on Saturday, May 23, 2026, at TKP Garden City Osaka Umeda. The seminar is titled “The Golden Route for Integrated Secondary School Students: A Career Strategy Seminar to Balance Regular Exams and Eiken® and Win Admission to a Preferred School.” The seminar is mainly intended for students and parents from integrated junior and senior high schools with many WAYS students enrolled at its Umeda-area classrooms, including Umeda, Tennoji, Uehonmachi, Nishinomiya-Kitaguchi, Shijo-Karasuma, and Yamato-Saidaiji. It will introduce regular exam preparation methods unique to a specialized tutoring school, as well as career strategies centered on the use of Eiken®. As university admissions increasingly shift toward decisions being finalized before the end of the calendar year, high school grades and external English test scores are becoming major factors in admissions outcomes. According to a 2025 survey by Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, 53.6% of university entrants secured their destinations through comprehensive selection or school recommendation-based selection. Meanwhile, 478 universities, or 63% of all universities, use external English proficiency tests in admissions, and Eiken® accounts for 91.6% of the tests used by applicants. Integrated junior and senior high schools often move quickly through coursework and assign heavy workloads, leaving many parents concerned that their children do not study enough at home or cannot improve their regular exam scores. Drawing on its experience teaching more than 15,000 integrated secondary school students, WAYS will present concrete strategies for balancing regular exam preparation with Eiken® certification while aiming for admission to a preferred university. The seminar consists of two parts. Part One, “Regular Exam Preparation by a Specialized Tutoring School,” will run from 10:20 to 10:50 and is aimed at parents of students from first-year junior high through first-year high school. It will explain how to overcome the limits of home study through scientific approaches and thorough learning management, including study methods based on task-induced motivation, tracking progress through school materials, and WAYS’ key performance indicator of confirmation test pass rates. It will also introduce initiatives to build non-cognitive skills such as self-management and the ability to follow through on commitments through weekly vocabulary tests. Part Two, “Preferred Career Path Strategy,” will run from 11:05 to 11:35 and is aimed at parents of third-year junior high through first-year high school students. It will explain concrete strategies for both internal advancement and external entrance exams, covering recent trends that differ significantly from the parent generation’s experience, target timing and levels for Eiken® acquisition, common pitfalls in choosing humanities or sciences tracks, and route-specific strategies that clarify what students should start doing now. Parents of first- and second-year junior high students may also attend Part Two. Participants will receive free school-specific information materials based on the school their child attends. For families not currently enrolled at WAYS, 15-minute individual consultation sessions will be offered before Part One, after Part One, and after Part Two by advance reservation. The seminar is free, limited to the first 60 participants, and registration closes at 23:59 on Thursday, May 21, 2026, unless capacity is reached earlier. WAYS provides six-year support from regular exam preparation through university entrance exams. In junior high and first-year high school, it focuses on raising school grades through regular exam preparation, which can support internal advancement and designated school recommendations. In the second and third years of high school, WAYS shifts to customized preparation for each student’s desired path, including general selection, internal advancement, and school recommendation-based selection, supporting goals ranging from escaping failing grades to entering highly selective universities.