Market Overview

Inquiry-based learning is in the spotlight in school education, as it guides children to in-depth proactive learning, which can lead to a shift from passive learning.The market size of inquiry-based learning services in the form of textbooks, programs, platforms, consulting, and assessment is estimated to reach 2,380 million yen in 2023, 149.7% of the size in the previous year. As “Comprehensive Inquiry Time”, an inquiry-based learning time, became a mandatory subject in high schools in FY2022, the apparent lack of funds, human resources, and experience in implementing the subject has led high schools to accelerate the outsourcing of inquiry-based learning services.While there are some schools that had already outsourced some curriculum since before the compulsory subject issue arose, for most schools, FY2022 is the first time they have used external services. In addition, subsidies and grant programs have been promoted through which schools have been able to introduce external services. This background has expanded the market for inquiry-based learning services.

Noteworthy Topics

Next Challenge is Participation of Companies and Monetization

Triggered by the reform of the education system, the importance and required quality of inquiry-based learning is increasing. While there is momentum in schools to brush up on their course contents by themselves and use inquiry-based learning as the method of attracting students, more schools, especially those with external linkages problems, hope to introduce programs in which companies participate.

As real challenges faced by companies, it can be a good topic for inquiry-based learning, which is highly valued in that it can be a good opportunity for students to be involved in corporate activities and society, and in that feedback from employees can be obtained. In general, however, programs that require customization and staffing tend to have high unit prices, making them difficult for public high schools with small budgets to implement. Still, there are some service providers which have found a way to offer such a program to schools while monetizing from corporations.

On the corporate side, there are cases of companies sending employees to schools free of charge as a matter of corporate social responsibility, or cases of companies paying service providers from advertising and human resources budgets to raise awareness of the company’s products, services, or the company itself.
As marketing and recruiting activities become more sophisticated, and companies fail to find effective ways to improve these activities, a certain level of outreach to high school students is considered to achieve a certain level of benefit. Employee participation in the program at a school also seems to be viewed as a part of human resource development.

Bringing in many companies to take part in inquiry-based learning and monetizing from companies are the challenges for inquiry-based learning service providers going forward, but they can also be the solutions to school and social problems as well as the market expansion.

Future Outlook

The inquiry-based learning services market is projected to reach 3,590 million yen in 2024, 150.8% of the size in the preceding year.
Initially, when “Comprehensive Inquiry Time” became a compulsory subject, not a few companies implemented the subject by themselves and were in a "wait and see" status for outsourcing it. However, those companies that felt technical and time constraints in implementing it by themselves embarked on introducing external inquiry-based learning services. In the 2023-2024 period, new entrants of service providers were active. In the future, it is expected that the cap for subsidy and grant programs will be lowered, and the number of new entrants will be reduced. Therefore, there will be a limited number of service providers increasing a certain level of revenue, which will slow down market expansion.

Research Outline