Photo/Illutration Michiko Fukuoka, director of Cantinho da Tia Chechela, a day care center in Okazaki, Aichi Prefecture, teaches children the names of facial features as they look into mirrors to draw their faces on July 23. (Maiko Ito)

OKAZAKI, Aichi Prefecture—One day in the summer at a nursery school here, 4- and 5-year-old children were looking into mirrors and drawing their own faces.

Principal Michiko Fukuoka sat next to them and pointed at her eyebrows to teach them how to say the word in Portuguese.

On the other side of the classroom, toddlers aged 1 and 2 were smiling as they played with blocks or were held by staff.

The language spoken at the facility is Portuguese to “prepare the children to talk to their relatives before they eventually leave Japan and return to their home country,” Fukuoka said.

Cantinho da Tia Chechela is an unlicensed nursery school in Okazaki attended by about 30 Brazilian children.

Okazaki has been designated a “national strategic special zone” to make it easier for unlicensed day care centers with foreign students to hire nursery school teachers who were born and certified abroad.

The move aims to create an environment where kids and caregivers can communicate in their native languages, and provide services for students who will eventually return to their home countries.

Okazaki became the second municipality in the country to receive this designation after Chatan in Okinawa Prefecture.

HIGH BARRIERS

Unlicensed nursery schools are not registered under the Child Welfare Act or other laws and must report to prefectural governments to operate.

Unlicensed facilities accommodate children on the waiting list for day care centers in urban areas and foreign children who are unable to attend Japanese nursery schools.

Fukuoka, who comes from Brazil, worked as a baby sitter after she gave birth.

After receiving many applications from Brazilian parents, she founded Cantinho da Tia Chechela in 2016.

Aiming to provide a high-quality programs for children, the nursery school plans its daily activities in accordance with standards established by the Brazilian government.

Many of its staff members hold professional child care qualifications from Brazilian universities that are equivalent to those of nursery school teachers in Japan.

But the facility hadn’t met Japan’s standards for unlicensed nursery schools, which require that at least one-third of the staff must be child care workers or nurses qualified in Japan.

Amid a serious labor shortage, it is even more difficult to hire Japanese child care workers who can speak foreign languages.

There is also a language barrier for foreign staff to obtain qualifications in Japan or for foreign children to transfer to Japanese child care facilities.

Local municipalities have been calling on the central government to address these issues.

FOR AN INCLUSIVE SOCIETY

In response, the government eased requirements in fiscal 2023 for child care facilities where more than half the students are foreign nationals in municipalities designated as national strategic special zones.

These facilities can now satisfy the requirements by having a certain number of nursery school teachers certified outside Japan and at least one teacher certified in Japan.

Fukuoka’s day care center met the requirements because it has been employing Japanese child care workers to read books aloud in Japanese for the last three years.

Okazaki was designated a national strategic special zone in June, and the nursery school was deemed to have met the standards for unregistered facilities in July.

“Child care facilities that maintain a certain level of quality can now get certified, allowing parents and children to feel at ease in these facilities,” Fukuoka said.

She welcomed that the new system considers the needs of foreign families, saying, “It also sends a message that Japanese society cares about us.”

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