Most international schools in Asia that offer the IB Diploma adopted it in the last twenty years. Canadian Academy has taught it since 1980, when it became one of the earliest schools in Japan to be IB-accredited. Forty-five years on, the school runs the full IB continuum: Primary Years Programme from Kindergarten through Grade 5, Middle Years Programme across Grades 6 to 10, and the Diploma Programme at Grades 11 and 12.
For a Taiwanese family considering Canadian Academy, this continuity matters. A child who joins in the Primary years experiences inquiry-based learning built on the same framework as their senior-year Diploma work. The pedagogical approach does not change at divisional transitions; the school has had time to work out how each stage feeds into the next. The 2025 Diploma cohort produced a ninety-eight percent pass rate with an average of 33.3 points, above the global mean of 30.6 for the same session.
Canadian Academy sits on Rokkō Island, a man-made island off central Kobe developed specifically as a residential community for international families. The island sits twenty minutes from downtown Kobe and thirty-seven minutes from Osaka. International supermarkets, English-speaking services, a five-kilometre greenbelt, and a waterfront promenade support daily life. The school's campus covers nine acres on a single integrated site, and all divisions share that site: elementary, middle, and high school children walk the same grounds through their thirteen years at the school.
Scale is a deliberate feature. Around 620 students across the full PreK to Grade 12 range, with roughly forty nationalities represented. About a quarter of students are Japanese nationals, with the rest divided between North American, European, and other Asian backgrounds. Class sizes are not published, but the single-campus, single-division structure and the school's family-scale feel have consistently appeared in parent testimonials as defining features. For families coming from a larger international school in Taipei, Canadian Academy will feel different in kind.
The school runs a boarding program for Grades 9 to 12, housing around forty students from more than eighteen nationalities in Gloucester House. This is a small boarding program compared to other schools of its age, but it is long-established, and dorm parents are members of the teaching faculty. For Taiwanese families considering a boarding pathway to Japan for an older student, Canadian Academy is one of the few options available.
Canadian Academy opened on September 13, 1913 in Aotani-cho, Kobe, under founding principal Ethel Gould Misener. It began as Canadian Methodist Academy with sixteen students, serving the children of missionary parents and offering boarding from the start. In 1917 the school was renamed Canadian Academy, the form it has carried since. Wartime disruption during the 1940s interrupted the school's operations; post-war rebuilding was led by alumnus Herbert Norman of the Class of 1922, a Canadian diplomat and Japan scholar whose name now sits above the school library.
The move to the current Rokkō Island campus in 1990 coincided with the growth of the expatriate community in greater Kobe. The school adopted the IB Diploma Programme in 1980, becoming one of the earliest IB-accredited schools in Japan. In 2011 it added the Primary Years Programme and Middle Years Programme to create the full IB continuum. The school holds concurrent accreditation from the International Baccalaureate Organization, the Council of International Schools, and the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, and completed a combined re-accreditation visit in 2025.
The school's stated mission is to inspire students to inquire, reflect, and choose to compassionately impact the world throughout their lives. Its stated values emphasize diversity, health of planet and community, and the link between knowledge and purposeful action. Approximately three thousand students have graduated since 1913, and alumni regularly return to the school as mentors.
Canadian Academy teaches the International Baccalaureate across all three divisions. Primary Years Programme runs Kindergarten through Grade 5; Middle Years Programme runs Grades 6 through 10; the Diploma Programme runs Grades 11 and 12. The language of instruction is English throughout. Japanese is offered as an IB Language A course for students who want to develop Japanese at first-language level; no Mandarin or Chinese-heritage program is identified in the school's public materials.
Canadian Academy publishes its IB Diploma cohort figures in each annual school profile. The most recent numbers come from the May 2025 examination session. The school does not publish detailed matriculation lists or standardized test score distributions, and university destinations are described at a summary level rather than itemized.
Canadian Academy does not publish a named list of universities attended in recent cohorts. The school's materials describe graduates matriculating "to top universities around the world" and highlight the university counseling infrastructure (up to twelve applications supported per student). For families who need specifics on destinations for Taiwanese or Japanese graduates, the school's college counseling office is the right point of contact.
Canadian Academy uses rolling admissions, with applications accepted up to a year in advance. There is a standard January 31 deadline for March notification each year, but decisions can be made within a week of interview for mid-year applicants. Interviews can be conducted in person on Rokkō Island or online for families outside the Kansai region, which is how most Taipei families first engage.
Canadian Academy fits some Taiwanese families very well, and others less so. This is our honest reading of the match.
Kobe is a short flight from Taipei, and Canadian Academy's IB continuum maps cleanly onto the kind of preparation and continuation work Harland does well. Our role is not to tutor your child at Canadian Academy. It is to help before and after the move: through the decision, through the preparation, and through the years ahead. Families who leave Taipei almost always keep studying with us remotely.
Families considering Canadian Academy often begin studying with us in Taipei to prepare for the inquiry-based IB pedagogy and the academic English the school expects. Students who move to Kobe usually continue with us remotely through IB Diploma subjects, Extended Essay and IA writing, and university applications. A few of the programs families reach for most often.
A consultation with our Student Coordinator is the fastest way to think the decision through with someone who is not trying to sell you the school. We can talk about what moving to Kobe looks like in practice, whether Canadian Academy's full IB continuum suits your child's learning style, or how Harland can continue with them once they are there.