Japanese Saturday School in Sydney: Fees, Hours & Entry

Sydney is one of the easier cities in the world to keep a child’s Japanese alive — and one of the more confusing to search. “Japanese Saturday school Sydney” returns a Saturday school, a Sunday school, a full-time international school and a dozen tutors, all using similar words. Here is the short answer: the Sydney Saturday School of Japanese (SSSJ) is the Saturday school most families mean. It runs at Cammeray Public School on the lower North Shore, costs A$160 per term, and asks that your child can already hold a conversation in Japanese with the teacher. Below: the hours, the fees, the entry requirement that surprises people, the waitlist, and what to do if the North Shore is not where you live.

Japanese weekend schools in Sydney: the comparison

School	Type	Day	Ages	Fee	Where
Sydney Saturday School of Japanese (SSSJ)	Community Japanese school	Saturday 8:55–11:50	5–18	A$160 per term	Cammeray
Japanese Sunday School	Community Japanese school	Sunday	Preschool – school age	A$140 per term (A$170 preschool, A$190 international class)	Sydney
Sydney Japanese International School (SJIS)	Full-time day school	Mon–Fri	Primary	A$13,680 per year (2025)	Terrey Hills
Private tutors	One-to-one	Any	Any	Varies	In-home or online
TOMODACHI JAPAN	Online, conversation & friendship with kids in Japan	Any day (unlimited attendance)	5–18	One flat monthly fee — see the free guide	Your home

SSSJ: hours, fees and the entry requirement

The Sydney Saturday School of Japanese has been running since 1993 and now teaches around 19 classes — two each from kindergarten through Year 7, plus a combined Years 8–10 class. It meets at Cammeray Public School, Palmer St, Cammeray NSW 2062.

• Hours: 8:55 a.m. – 11:50 a.m., three teaching periods with breaks. You have your Saturday afternoon back — a real advantage over full-day supplementary schools in other cities.
• Fee: A$160 per student per term. Most community schools also charge an enrolment fee of roughly A$50–100 plus an annual levy, so budget slightly above the headline figure.
• Ages: 5 to 18. A child must turn 5 by 1 April of the enrolment year. Placement follows age using Japanese year levels, though younger placement is possible where it suits the child.
• Entry requirement: the child must be able to converse in Japanese with the teacher. The school does not split heritage speakers from other learners — there is one stream, and the filter is spoken Japanese.
• Enrolment: applications are accepted year-round. When a class is full, you go on a waiting list and are contacted when a place opens. The 2026 school year begins 2 May, with terms running through to April 2027.

Contact: contact@sssj.org.au or 0411-155-585 (Saturdays, 9 a.m.–12 p.m.).

Sydney Saturday School of Japanese — official site

The requirement most families trip on

“Must be able to converse in Japanese with the teacher” sounds mild. In practice it is the whole ballgame, and it works in an order that catches parents out.

Families usually go looking for a Saturday school because their child has stopped speaking Japanese. The child is six or seven, school has taken over, and every question in Japanese now gets an English answer. So the parent finds SSSJ, applies — and discovers the school expects the very thing they were hoping it would fix. Not because the school is unwelcoming, but because a single Saturday morning cannot manufacture spoken fluency from nothing; it can only maintain and extend what already exists.

The useful conclusion is that spoken Japanese and Saturday school are in the wrong order in most people’s heads. Conversation comes first, and it comes from having someone worth talking to. Saturday school then does what it is genuinely good at: literacy, structure, and a community of families in the same boat.

Three Sydney-specific things to plan around

• Cammeray is the lower North Shore. Wonderful if you are in Neutral Bay, Crows Nest, Chatswood or Mosman. Considerably less wonderful from the Inner West, the Eastern Suburbs, or anywhere past Parramatta — and it is a Saturday morning crossing of the Harbour Bridge, every week. The Japanese Sunday School is worth looking at as a second option if the day suits you better.
• Classes fill, and then it is a waitlist. Applications run year-round, but popular year levels reach capacity and you wait for a place. If you know you want a spot for the year beginning May, apply well before, not in April.
• The HSC question arrives faster than you think. SSSJ’s classes run to a combined Years 8–10 group; the NSW senior route — HSC Japanese Continuers, Beginners or Background Speakers — is a separate decision, made in Year 10, and it rewards literacy heavily. A student with fluent spoken Japanese and weak kanji gets caught. If HSC Japanese is anywhere on your horizon, read our guide to choosing the right HSC or VCE Japanese course before Year 10, not during it.

The online option: Sydney’s time zone is close to ideal

Sydney sits one hour ahead of Japan in winter and two ahead during daylight saving. That is one of the friendliest gaps on earth for a Japan-based school: a class running in the Japanese late afternoon lands in the Sydney early evening, straight after school, with no Saturday commute involved at all.

• The other children live in Japan. This is what a Sydney classroom cannot reproduce. In any local class every child also speaks English, so English reasserts itself the second the teacher turns away. Online with children in Japan there is no shared fallback language — Japanese is simply how you take part in the conversation.
• Unlimited attendance, one flat fee. One flat monthly fee for as many sessions as your child wants, in small groups of about eight with a homeroom teacher, taught by qualified, practising Japanese teachers.
• Grouped by conversation level, not school year. The child who cannot yet “converse in Japanese with the teacher” has somewhere to start — which, in Sydney specifically, is often the missing step before Saturday school becomes possible at all.

If your child can already hold a conversation and you can reach Cammeray, SSSJ is good value and a good community — A$160 a term is remarkable for what it delivers. If the conversation is the thing that has gone quiet, start there instead, and let Saturday school do the literacy once your child has friends worth talking to. Our full comparison of Japanese schools for kids in Sydney covers every route in detail.

FAQ from Sydney families

Is SSSJ a hoshuko?

Not in the strict sense. A hoshuko is a supplementary school delivering Japan’s national curriculum to keep children at Japanese grade level, typically with heavy homework and a longer day. SSSJ is a community Japanese school: three periods on a Saturday morning, one stream, aimed at maintaining and building the language rather than tracking Japan’s school year exactly. For most Sydney families that is the more realistic model — but if your family is returning to Japan and grade-level kokugo is the requirement, ask specifically about what is covered before you enrol.

My child understands Japanese but answers in English. Will they be accepted?

Speak to the school honestly rather than guessing — a child who understands well and produces little sits right on the boundary of “can converse with the teacher”. What we would say is that this is an extremely common pattern and it is fixable, but not by one morning a week. The block is almost never comprehension; it is confidence and the absence of anyone the child actually wants to speak Japanese to. Fix that first and the Saturday-school application becomes straightforward.

Sunday school or Saturday school?

Mostly a logistics question rather than an academic one. Compare the day against your family’s existing sport and activity commitments, and compare the travel — the school you can actually get to for years is better than the school that looks marginally better on paper. Fees are similar: A$160 a term at SSSJ, A$140 at the Sunday school with higher rates for preschool and the international class.

Can we do Saturday school and online lessons together?

Yes — and in Sydney the timing makes it unusually easy, because online lessons sit on weekday evenings and never touch the Saturday. The Saturday school gives structure, literacy and a local community; the weeknight sessions give conversation and friendships in Japan. Different jobs, no conflict.