The city of Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture, said Monday it will provide financial aid for Brazilian and Peruvian students at local unlicensed schools to help them buy textbooks in the academic year starting in April.
The city will be able to provide up to ¥10,000 each to 745 students, and the expenses have been included in Hamamatsu's fiscal 2009 budget. It costs around ¥30,000 per student a year to purchase the textbooks from their home countries.
Hamamatsu is the first municipality to provide this type of subsidy to foreign students at unlicensed schools, according to the education ministry.
An increasing number of foreign families are returning to their home countries after losing jobs due to the recession.