ITOKI CORPORATION (Head office: Chuo-ku, Tokyo; President and CEO: Koji Minato) has concluded a comprehensive collaboration agreement in the fields of education and research with Osaka Kyoiku University (Location: Kashiwara City, Osaka Prefecture; President: Ikuko Okamoto; hereinafter referred to as Osaka Kyoiku University).

The purpose of this agreement is to contribute to solving various educational issues and to realizing schools and educational settings that are compliant with the SDGs and a super-smart society. To achieve this, we will focus on the working styles of teachers and staff who support educational activities and promote environmental development and research that will contribute to the creation of a sustainable educational environment. Through collaboration, we aim to build a school model that allows teachers and staff to continue to demonstrate their abilities while maintaining and improving the quality of education.

Elementary, junior high, and high schools are required to take steps to improve the quality of their educational activities by upgrading educational content and promoting STEAM education. However, the work of teachers and staff is becoming more complex every year, with long working hours and increased workloads becoming issues. In order to sustainably improve the quality of education, it is essential to create an environment in which teachers and staff can consistently demonstrate their abilities.

Furthermore, as digital technology becomes more widely implemented in society, schools are being asked to adapt their educational activities and organizational management to ICT. Building a sustainable educational system while responding to these changes is an important theme for schools and educational settings.

Itoki has been working to create spaces that support improved worker productivity and engagement. We believe that applying this knowledge to the education sector and creating an environment where teachers and staff can work more efficiently and sustainably will ultimately lead to solving educational issues and laying the foundation for creating next-generation schools.

Under this agreement, Osaka Kyoiku University and Itoki will strengthen their collaboration in the fields of education and research and promote efforts to improve the school environment. Using affiliated schools and kindergartens as a field, they will continue to consider the ideal learning space, faculty space, and the development of an ICT environment, and will develop these into empirical initiatives.

In the process, we will objectively understand the status of space usage and work flow, and also analyze the relationship between the environment and work styles. By utilizing data, we will create an environment that is in line with the actual situation of teaching staff, leading to optimized work efficiency and space utilization. Through these efforts, we aim to improve the quality of the school environment as a foundation that supports educational activities, and to build a sustainable and advanced school model. Please note that implementation is premised on sufficient consideration for the protection of personal information and school management.

This collaboration is an initiative aimed at solving educational issues and realizing a school that is suited to the society of the next generation. By creating an environment where teachers and staff can continue to demonstrate their abilities, we will strengthen the sustainable foundation that supports the quality of all educational activities.

Going forward, we will conduct step-by-step verification and validation, and accumulate and disseminate the results as research. We aim to build a model for a sustainable and expandable school environment, and contribute to the advancement of educational settings, with an eye toward expanding this to other educational institutions.