Thriving in Nature: Kansai International Academy to Launch Mountain Campus in April 2027

Original Japanese article published Jul. 31, 2026.
日本語版はこちら.

Grade 4 Students to Spend About Half Their Classes in the Mountains: Outdoor Education Meets Inquiry Learning

Kansai International Academy will launch a new place of learning in Kobe in April 2027: the Mountain Campus.

The students who will learn there are the academy’s Grade 4 students. They will spend about half their class hours at a facility surrounded by nature, combining outdoor education with inquiry learning.

Kansai International Academy’s Kobe Campus has long practiced bilingual International Baccalaureate education in Japanese and English. It is an all-through IB school linking the Primary Years Programme (PYP) in the Elementary School with the Middle Years Programme (MYP) and Diploma Programme (DP) in the Secondary School, and the Mountain Campus is an initiative to extend the inquiry learning the school has built up into the natural world.

Hybrid Learning Between City and Nature at Age 10

Kansai International Academy sees Grade 4, age 10, as a critical turning point, when children begin to see things objectively and to become aware of their connections to society and to nature.

At the Mountain Campus, children take in dappled sunlight, wind, the feel of soil, and the changes in living things through all five senses. They do more than come to know nature from textbooks and video; through real experience, they come to understand that they themselves are part of it.

While AI and digital technology make life more convenient, children have fewer chances to engage with nature and to care for the planet. The purpose of the Mountain Campus is to develop not only knowledge of science and technology but also the sensibility to ask what they should be used for.

In the video introducing the campus, neuroscientist Ken Mogi, advisor to the school’s Curriculum Lab, explains that the facility is about 10 minutes by car from Shin-Kobe Station.

It is close to the city, yet it gives children a rich natural setting in which to learn.

Ken Mogi on Nature and the Growing Brain

Mogi explains the effect of nature on a child’s brain from the standpoint of neuroscience. By encountering the biodiversity of plants and living things, children build up experience in taking in and processing the complexity of the natural world. The wonder and excitement that arise in nature, and working together with peers, hold great meaning for a child’s learning, he says.

Ken Mogi, Neuroscientist: Summary of Comments

Mogi sees the years around age 10 as a critical period in which a child grows from being the one protected to eventually being the one who supports others. He expects that spending that transition in nature will lead to the ability to adapt to change, support one’s peers, and create something new together.

Carol Inugai Dixon on the Cycle of Life and Ecoliteracy

Carol Inugai Dixon, founding president of the Japan Association of Research into International Baccalaureate Education and visiting professor at the University of Tsukuba, also points to the importance of outdoor education today. Science, technology, and AI bring great progress and possibility, but they also have a side that distances people from the natural world and from what can be learned in it.

Carol Inugai Dixon, Visiting Professor, University of Tsukuba: Summary of Comments

In the city, time moves to train timetables and clocks. Nature has different rhythms of life: a butterfly’s lifespan, the blossoming of cherry trees, the growth of plants. Observing those organic cycles cultivates wonder, awe, a sense of beauty, and humility.

The ecoliteracy Inugai Dixon describes is not simply environmental knowledge. It is the capacity to understand how the Earth’s environment works, to build a good relationship with nature, and to think about what science and technology are for.

From Japan’s First Bilingual PYP School to an All-Through IB School

The Mountain Campus cannot be understood apart from the bilingual IB education in Japanese and English that Kansai International Academy has built up over the years.

In April 2015, the academy’s Elementary School became Japan’s first Japanese-English bilingual school authorized to offer the PYP. Its high school was authorized for the DP in January 2020 and its junior and senior high school for the MYP in May 2023, and it now runs an all-through IB education linking the PYP, MYP, and DP.

Its defining feature is bilingual education that uses both Japanese and English as languages of learning. The academy’s DP is designed so that students can work toward a bilingual diploma by meeting the requirements, such as taking Language and Literature in both English and Japanese.

Rather than developing English alone, the academy’s bilingual IB builds deep thinking in the mother tongue, Japanese, and a sense of identity as Japanese, while preparing students for universities both in Japan and abroad.

University Admissions from Japanese Medical Schools to Universities Abroad

The academy also publishes admissions results across a wide range of universities in Japan and overseas.

Domestic admissions published by the school include the medical faculties of Okayama University, Kochi University, and Kagoshima University, as well as Tokyo University of the Arts, International Christian University, Keio University, Waseda University, and Sophia University. Overseas, New York University, the University of Warwick, the University of Bristol, the University of Manchester, the University of Melbourne, and the University of Queensland are listed among admissions. Veterinary faculties in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia have also been chosen, a route quite different from a typical Japanese university entrance exam.

The breadth of fields is itself notable: medicine, veterinary science, the arts, liberal arts, business, and more.

The academy’s education is not aimed only at universities abroad. The strength of a bilingual all-through IB school is that, on a foundation of strong Japanese and English, both Japanese and overseas universities remain open as options.

The Mountain Campus Extends PYP Inquiry into Nature

The Grade 4 students who will learn at the Mountain Campus are in the PYP years of the International Baccalaureate. Rather than a nature-experience facility detached from regular classes, the campus is positioned as an extension of the PYP inquiry learning the academy already practices into a natural environment.

In nature, a right answer is not always waiting. The weather changes, living things behave unexpectedly, and plans do not always go as intended. That is precisely why children observe, ask questions, experiment, fail, and consult their peers before deciding what to try next.

Finding questions in nature in Grade 4, deepening the connections to subjects and social issues in the MYP, and developing them into academic inquiry in the DP: seen across the academy’s all-through IB education, the experience at the Mountain Campus looks set to become one of the foundations for the inquiry learning that follows.

In an age when AI presents vast knowledge and answers in an instant, what is needed is the ability to find one’s own questions in the reality in front of you. A sensibility toward nature and life, and the judgment to decide what technology is for, are indispensable too.

To play in the mountains to the fullest is also to learn from them to the fullest. Kansai International Academy’s Mountain Campus looks set to become a new model of bilingual international education, one that connects city and nature, science and sensibility, play and learning, and the PYP through to the DP.

Contact

Kansai International Academy (Kobe)
Website: https://www.kansai-intlschool.jp/

Address:
Early Learning Center, Kindergarten, and Elementary School: 4-1-31 Shinzaike Minamimachi, Nada-ku, Kobe-shi, Hyogo 657-0864
Secondary School: 4-9-28 Shinzaike Minamimachi, Nada-ku, Kobe-shi, Hyogo 657-0864