The growth of the tutorial cram school market, which has supported the total cram school market, finally ended in 2008 due to the decrease in the average customer spend, conservative school openings by major players, etc. While junior high school examinations in Tokyo metropolitan area and Kansai region were steady, the growth of the cram schools providing large group classes for senior high school examination was very little, and preparatory schools and cram schools for collage entrance examination also experienced hard time in growing although the rate of market shrinkage was being reduced, and consequently, the size of the total cram school market shrank.

Large scale corporate acquisitions by major learning material providers and major cram school operators now has been slowing down, but there are some signs that they are still active. Although the growth of the market has already stopped, there is high possibility that the market get on the growth and expansion path after around 2011 with expected increase of students since there will be more items to be learned at school in future due to the revision of school curriculum guidelines done in response to the criticism toward the relaxed education policy.

The market shrunk in 2008 due to the decrease in consumer demand for acquisition of qualification under circumstance of the job market favorable for job seekers in addition to the revision of such qualifying examinations as the bar examination, examination of registered architect, etc. and nursing care qualifications which are not well-established. After the Lehman shock that happed in the fall of 2008, however, the range of reduction in market size is becoming smaller as the number of participants to the courses for the civil-service exam, bookkeeping classes, etc that are directly linked to employment has been rising.

In 2008, the diminished consumer confidence due to the recession that began in fall of the year greatly impacted on language lessons especially for adults and constituted a major factor for the reduction in the market size. Furthermore, consumer confidence for English lessons for infants also diminished as the household disposable income decreased and this also contributed to the shrinkage of the market even though the impact is not as large as that of the lessons for adults.

In early spring of 2008, recruitment of major corporations was active, and corporate job trainings of any kinds of themes and forms, including training for new recruits or younger employees, various training programs for different levels of corporate ladder, trainings for manners and how to treat customers, IT trainings, logical thinking, etc. are in good demand in the first half of the year. However, the worsened business confidence that began in fall of 2008 largely decreased demand for corporate job training services, and as a result, the market size was reduced in 2008 totally offsetting the growth achieved in the first half of the year.