The Times: “China’s wealthiest parents want their kids to have a rounded education, in Britain. We go school hunting with them
On a leafy road high on a hill overlooking Bath, a coach pulls over and 34 Chinese people pile out. Spilling across the road, heedless of the traffic, they start taking photographs and pointing at the imposing crenellated roofs and stained-glass windows of the 19th-century buildings in front of them.
A minder tries to corral them, but he might as well be a herder of cats. “It’s a bit like trying to control children,” says an onlooker. The minder shakes his head. “Worse! Children do as they are told. These people don’t.”
“These people” are members of the wealthy Chinese elite and they are on a mission. Their arrival at Kingswood School is the latest stop on a week-long tour of our nation’s most prestigious public schools. They are here seeking the best education that money can buy.
The popularity of our private education among rich Russians has been well documented. But mainland Chinese are now the second-biggest group of overseas students at British schools, after those from Hong Kong.
There are almost 25,000 non-British students, with parents living overseas, at British schools, and nearly 4,000 are from mainland China. “It’s the biggest growth market,” says Ian Hunt, the managing director of Gabbitas, the education consultancy.
Gabbitas, founded in the 19th century in order to recruit teachers for public schools, numbers H.G. Wells, Evelyn Waugh, Sir Edward Elgar, Amy Johnson and Sir John Betjeman among its long list of hires. Today, it still places teachers, but its core business is in tutoring pupils for entrance to independent schools. It has offices in London, Russia, Japan, South Korea and two in China, in Shanghai and Guangzhou, with a third opening next month in Wenzhou.
Chinese connoisseurs are snapping up Western art and fine French wine, and now they are keen to buy what they regard as another of the world’s most exclusive products: a British education. This week’s tour has already taken them to prep schools, including the Dragon School in Oxford and Caldicott School, Berkshire, and senior schools, such as Abingdon School and Eton College.
For a glimpse as to where these schools might eventually lead, they were shown around Christ Church College, Oxford.”
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 