Tokyo public high schools: full-time, credit-based, specialised, and the board's designated types

A Tokyo metropolitan high school (都立高校, toritsu kōkō) is not one kind of school. The Tokyo Board of Education sorts them by when the student is in class, by what they study, and by labels the board attaches to some existing schools. The label changes the day and the subjects. It does not make one school a prize and another a fallback. Read the school's own guide before you apply.

When the student is in school

The board's explanation page, updated 1 April 2026, describes two full-time patterns. Both run in the daytime and both take three years.

Course	What the page says	Schools on that page
Full-time, by year (全日制・学年制, zennichisei)	Subjects are fixed for each year. Classes run from morning into the afternoon.	148, or 149 if Fukasawa is counted in the total
Full-time, by credit (全日制・単位制, tan'isei)	Required subjects, plus more subjects the student chooses.	24

Part-time (定時制, teijisei) and correspondence (通信制, tsūshinsei) are the other two legal courses. The board's older "types" page, with counts as of 1 April 2025, describes six day-and-night credit schools: classes in more than one part of the day, and a route that can finish in three years. How those courses enrol, and what a correspondence week looks like, is a separate decision from picking a daytime general course. Start from the school's own course guide, not from the name alone.

What the student studies

Most metropolitan high schools are a general course (普通科, futsūka): 133 schools on the April 2026 page. The subjects are the usual ones, as at junior high: Japanese, maths, science, social studies, a foreign language, PE, and the rest.

Four general-course schools split into a named stream from the first year. The page names them: a foreign-language course at Fukagawa, Matsugaya, and Kodaira, and a plastic-arts course at Katakura.

A specialised department (専門学科) trains a field. The same page lists, among others, agriculture, industry (including a long work placement at three dual-system schools), commerce, fisheries, home economics, welfare, science and mathematics, arts, and PE. The practical work is the course. An arts or PE department sits Japanese, maths, and English at the February exam and adds its own practical. Read that school's exam row.

総合学科 (sōgō gakka, integrated course) is the mix: 17 schools. Students still take Japanese and maths, and they also choose from a wide menu the page names as industry, commerce, agriculture, welfare, nursing, and art. The point of the department is that choice.

国際学科 (kokusai gakka) is one school, Kokusai High School. The page says it teaches international understanding and foreign languages. Inside it, the IB course follows the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme and also the subjects Japan requires for a high-school diploma. That course has its own January selection.

Labels the board puts on existing schools

Some of the schools above also carry a designation. The designation is the board's, for a fixed period. It is not a ranking this article makes.

Encourage schools (エンカレッジスクール). The April 2026 page describes them as schools that reteach basics for students who did not get going in elementary or junior high. It names the methods: two homeroom teachers, 30-minute lessons, smaller classes grouped by how ready the student is, and lessons built on experience. There are six, all full-time and year-based: four general, two industry. In the April 2027 entrance guidelines, schools with this designation do not hold the five-subject written exam.

Challenge schools (チャレンジスクール). The page describes day-and-night, credit-based, integrated schools in three sessions (morning, afternoon, night). They are aimed mainly at students who missed a lot of elementary or junior high, or who left a high school part-way. The types page counted seven as of 1 April 2025. The student chooses a session. Work in another session can make a three-year finish possible. Their exam rules are in a separate part of the guidelines.

University-preparation designations. On 19 May 2026 the board restated labels it has used for schools that organise preparation for university. The period is 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2030.

The board's own sentences, shortened only in translation:

• 進学指導重点校, seven schools: Hibiya, Nishi, Kunitachi, Hachioji Higashi, Toyama, Aoyama, Tachikawa. The page says they work on the study needed for highly competitive national universities. The board's selection note uses common-test scores and a count of current-year passes to a named list of universities.
• 進学指導特別推進校, seven schools: Oyamadai, Komaba, Shinjuku, Machida, Kokubunji, Kokusai, Komatsugawa. The page says they work toward national, public, and highly competitive private universities.
• 進学指導推進校, fifteen schools, including Ueno and Showa, which the notice says were added for this period. The page says they work toward university with national and public universities as the centre.

Those sentences are the board's description of a programme. A student does not "win" a designation. They apply to a school, and the school either carries the label or it does not. Other labels on the same page are narrower: extra English, a science inquiry programme, Japanese language support, or a business-skills course at ten commerce schools. Each one is a programme at a named set of schools. The explanation page is the index.

Combined schools are a different door

都立中高一貫教育校 are six-year schools. Students enter at the start of junior high, through the aptitude-test route, and then move into the upper years. The April 2027 high-school guidelines say a student who is already due to move up inside one of those schools cannot also apply to the February high-school exam. If your child is in the last year of elementary school, that is a different calendar. If your child is in third-year junior high at an ordinary municipal school, the February exam is the metropolitan door.

What to do now

• Decide the day shape first: daytime and fixed subjects, daytime and more choice, part-time, or correspondence.
• If you want a trade, a language stream, arts, or PE, open that department's exam row. The practical test is easy to miss.
• If a written exam is the wrong tool for your child, read the encourage and challenge pages, and check whether that school holds an interview instead.
• If a school's name is on a university-preparation list, read it as the board's programme label for 2025–2030. Then read the school's own guide for the actual week.
• Go to a 学校説明会 (gakkō setsumeikai, information session) before you write the school on the form. The counts above are the board's, on the dates given. Verify the school you mean.