By Su Xincheng, KYODO NEWS - Mar 6, 2020 - 10:26 | All, Japan, Coronavirus

Some e-learning program providers are offering their services for free to help students keep up with their studies while schools in Japan remain closed over the coronavirus outbreak.

Major comic book publishers, meanwhile, are taking the same step to keep students entertained, with the government calling on students to remain indoors before schools reopen in early April at the earliest.

Recruit Marketing Partners Co. started to offer Tuesday its "study sapuri" online educational service for free. The program allows fourth graders to high schoolers who are planning to sit university entrance exams to watch lectures by cram school teachers on such subjects as mathematics and history online.

The service will be provided free until April 30.

The company is also offering free of charge its service that allows teachers to assign homework to and conduct tests for students online, amid concern among both schools and parents about how children can keep up with their studies during the school closures through early April.

"I think it's the first time that schools nationwide have faced a long-term closure without any advance notice and many schools haven't prepared homework for students," said the company's spokeswoman Hiroko Saito. "We decided to offer free service as we wanted to help such schools."

Most of the nation's elementary, junior high and high schools shut their doors Monday in response to a sudden request from Prime Minister Shinzo Abe last week amid concern over the spread of the coronavirus.

Schools normally stay open until the latter half of March ahead of a spring break lasting for some two weeks.

Classi Corp., a Tokyo-based educational platform operator and a joint venture between education service provider Benesse Holdings Inc. and telecommunication giant SoftBank Corp., will also offer a free service to high schools nationwide from next Monday to April 30.

In addition to providing lecture videos, the classi platform allows students and teachers to communicate directly with each other.

"We would like to help in any way we can, as some schools that have already introduced our service said it helped them," the company's spokeswoman Kanako Shibata said.

Display maker Sharp Corp. began providing Tuesday free online learning materials to elementary and junior high school students. After obtaining an account from their schools, the students can use a computer or a tablet at home to answer questions in five subjects, such as the Japanese language, social studies, and arithmetic.

The "interactive study" service featuring a total of more than 60,000 questions in the five subjects on the cloud system were jointly developed with Shingakukai Holdings Co., which operates cram schools. Use of the service for a five-year period is usually sold to schools for about 3 million yen ($28,000).

Online content provider Dwango Co. also made its learning application for high school students publicly available for free on Sunday. Students can watch live streaming of classes, study to prepare for university entrance exams and review what they learned at junior high schools.

The company usually charges 1,000 yen per month for the service.

Meanwhile, in a bid to entertain students asked to remain indoors during the school closures, major publishers Shueisha Inc. and Shogakukan Inc. started free distribution of the back issues of their manga magazines -- the weekly Shonen Jump and the monthly Coro Coro Comic.

"We hope children and other people who have difficulty going outside can have fun," said an official at the Shonen Jump editorial department.

Through smartphone apps, the first to 13th volumes of the Shonen Jump released this year will be available until the end of this month, while Coro Coro Comic's January edition has already been distributed, with the following editions also set to be made public.

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