What parents paid from kindergarten through high school: the fiscal 2023 survey

The Ministry of Education asks parents what they actually paid for one child in a year. The survey is 子供の学習費調査 (kodomo no gakushūhi chōsa). The points PDF defines the headline figure as 保護者が支出した１年間・子供一人当たりの学習費総額. The latest results are fiscal 2023 (令和5年度): 1 April 2023 through 31 March 2024. The ministry corrected the figures and replaced the results on 16 January 2026. The yen below is from that corrected results summary, and from the corrected points PDF of the same day.

Each number is an average per child, across children at that kind of school, including children whose families paid nothing for juku or lessons. It is not a school's invoice, and it is not a forecast for your child. The survey covers kindergarten, elementary school, junior high and full-time high school, public and private. It does not cover international schools. Spending more than the average does not decide a school result.

One year, fiscal 2023

Learning costs (学習費総額) add three things parents paid: school costs (学校教育費: tuition where a school charges it, supplies, commuting, trips, payments to the school), school lunch where the survey collects it, and everything outside school (学校外活動費: home study, juku, tutors, correspondence courses, sports, music and similar lessons).

School	Public	Private
Kindergarten	184,646 yen	347,338 yen
Elementary	366,599 yen	1,741,516 yen
Junior high	542,450 yen	1,560,359 yen
High school, full-time	596,954 yen	1,179,261 yen

Private elementary is 4.8 times public on this table. Private junior high is 2.9 times public. Private full-time high school is 2.0 times public. The summary says that at public elementary and public junior high, more than 60% of the total is outside-school spending. At private junior high and private full-time high school, school costs are more than 70%.

Two rows, so the split is visible:

	Public elementary	Private junior high
School costs	74,336 yen (20.3%)	1,128,061 yen (72.3%)
Lunch	35,774 yen (9.8%)	9,317 yen (0.6%)
Outside school	256,489 yen (70.0%)	422,981 yen (27.1%)
Total	366,599 yen	1,560,359 yen

Public compulsory tuition is free; supplies, trips and lunch are the part a board may help with if it agrees. That rule, and the fact that the guidebook prints no income line for the help, is in public school tuition is free. The 74,336 yen is whatever public-elementary parents in the survey paid under the school-cost heading. It is not a tuition bill.

From the fiscal 2021 survey onward, the school-cost heading was widened so that entrance fees include schools the child sat and did not enter. The results summary marks that change. A private-school average can therefore include exam fees and entrance payments for a school the child does not attend.

Juku is inside the outside-school line, not the whole of it. The grade 4, 5 and 6 juku averages, and the share of public-elementary children whose families paid no juku at all, are in juku spending in grades 4 to 6. This page does not repeat those grade lines.

Fifteen years, added from each grade

The points PDF adds each grade's own average from age 3 in kindergarten through the third year of full-time high school. That sum is not "the all-grades average, times the number of years." Kindergarten's public average for a single year is 184,646 yen, but the three kindergarten years add to 532,177 yen, because each age has its own average.

Fiscal 2023 sums of the grade averages, from that table:

Stage	Years	Public	Private
Kindergarten	3	532,177 yen	1,038,087 yen
Elementary	6	2,197,261 yen	10,457,700 yen
Junior high	3	1,626,133 yen	4,671,589 yen
High school, full-time	3	1,784,895 yen	3,521,361 yen

The same PDF draws four paths and rounds them to the nearest 10,000 yen. It warns that rounding means the pieces need not add to the picture:

Path	Rounded total on the chart
Public the whole way	6.14 million yen
Private kindergarten, then public elementary, junior high and high school	6.65 million yen
Private kindergarten and private high school; public elementary and junior high	8.38 million yen
Private the whole way	19.69 million yen

The PDF also prints how many children were in private schools that year: 88.3% of kindergarteners, 1.3% of elementary children, 7.9% of junior-high students, and 35.5% of full-time high-school students. The all-private path is a real bill for the families on it. It is not the typical path through elementary school.

What a subsidy changes

These figures are what surveyed parents paid in fiscal 2023, after whatever reduction they had already received. They are not a price list you then subtract a grant from. Grants you have not applied for are not inside your future bill. The money map names the applications: child allowance, Tokyo 018, the medical card, daycare and kindergarten fees, supply-and-lunch help, and high-school tuition support. High-school support in particular is unpaid until someone files.

What goes wrong

• Multiplying 184,646 yen by three and calling that kindergarten. Use the grade-sum column.
• Reading 19.69 million yen as the cost of a public education.
• Treating the average as the quote a private school will send you. Ask the school for its own sheet, including the year you do not enter.
• Forgetting that the public elementary total is mostly outside school. A plan that adds a juku on top of 366,599 yen double-counts.
• Using the survey for an international school. It is the wrong population.

What to do now

1. Pick the row that matches the school you are actually considering. Public elementary in fiscal 2023 averaged 366,599 yen of parental spending. Private elementary averaged 1,741,516 yen.
2. Ask the school for its written fees for the year of entry, separate from this national average.
3. File the payments on the money map that match your address and the child's age. A survey average will not do that filing.
4. For juku in grades 4 to 6, use the grade table in the juku article, and remember that most public-elementary children in that survey had a juku line of zero.

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