Industry News
International students flock to UK independent schools
Posted on 27th February 2008
Middle-class parents around the globe are apparently sending their children abroad to English-speaking countries for a private school education in their droves.
According to a report in today's Financial Times, each nation's elite has their own reason for doing so, but what they have in common is a desire to have their children educated among Britons, rather than with other foreigners.
South Korean and Chinese parents both tend to place great importance on academic excellence and hope for their children to go to some of the West's top universities, including Oxford, Cambridge and Harvard.
Chinese mothers and fathers are also seeking a "less deferential and didactic" education for their offspring, Philip Evans, headmaster at Bedford School, told the paper.
Mark Eagers, headmaster at the co-educational Box Hill School, where foreign pupils fill about a quarter of the classes, said that some German parents are "increasingly despairing" of their country's education system and are turning to UK schools instead.
Harrow, the London boarding school, sets an "informal limit" of about 12 per cent on the numbers of foreign pupils it takes in every year, to preserve the uniquely 'British' education that parents send their children from abroad to receive.
Recent studies have found who children that have attended UK private schools are significantly more likely to win a place at Oxford or Cambridge, suggesting that foreign parents may be making a wise investment.