Harrow School is set to open a new campus in China despite concerns over a curriculum clampdown by the country’s ruling communist party.
The school’s international partner announced on Chinese social media that it will launch a new outpost in the Guangzhou province of mainland China in September 2027.
It will mark the top boarding school’s ninth franchise in China, and 13th campus in Asia.
The £53,550-a-year school debuted its first international campus in Thailand in 1998, which opened the floodgates for other British private schools to follow suit.
Many other private schools have, since then, pulled the plug on their Chinese operations over the past few years amid concerns over tough new education laws that control what is taught in classrooms.
But Asia International School Limited (AISL) Harrow, the UK boarding school’s Asian licensee, said it would open a new school for expat children in South China in the coming years.
In a post on its Chinese website, AISL Harrow said it held a “groundbreaking signing ceremony” at the end of June with local Chinese government officials to establish a major new school for 1,500 children aged 2-18.
It hopes the 64-classroom site in China’s Greater Bay Area will complete construction in early 2026, with the school set to open its doors to pupils the following year.
The company said the project had received “strong support and guidance from the Guangzhou Education Bureau and the Huangpu District government” and was “eagerly anticipated by the government”.
Harrow School, which counts numerous former British prime ministers including Sir Winston Churchill and Stanley Baldwin as alumni, licences its name, logo, uniform and education practices to international partners in return for a fee.
AISL Harrow said the new school in Guangzhou will teach children the English national curriculum, including the iGCSE and A-Level courses in high school.
The Telegraph has found evidence that some of its other international schools that teach the English curriculum also teach elements of the Chinese national curriculum, which is strictly monitored by the Chinese state.
Foreign students at Harrow Shenzhen are taught Chinese from Years 2 to 9. The school’s prospectus says that “as much as possible the curriculum will follow the National Chinese Curriculum Standards”.
Harrow Hong Kong also recently opened a Chinese Cultural Centre to enhance “the teaching and learning of Chinese and a lifelong interest in Chinese culture”.
AISL Harrow also owns several other schools catered to Chinese nationals, which teach the Chinese national curriculum. They were forced to drop the word “international” from their names and retitle themselves Harrow Lide schools in 2022 after the Chinese Communist Party enforced strict new rules on the naming of private schools that teach Chinese children.
The rules introduced in 2021 also limited foreign control and participation in the running of private schools, including a ban on foreign textbooks and a requirement that school board members are Chinese.
New laws that came into force in January this year also said private schools in China must promote “patriotic education”. All schools teaching Chinese nationals are now forced to teach “intangible cultural heritage demonstrations are expected to be integrated into school programmes, so that young people can understand and appreciate more about patriotism”.
Guangzhou Education Bureau, whose officials were present at the signing ceremony for the latest Harrow Guangzhou school, has previously praised the law. An article on its website said the patriotic education programme was “significant for China in its critical stage of national rejuvenation”.
It forms part of an increasingly constrictive regime that has prompted British schools to reconsider their investment in the mainland Chinese market.
Westminster School, a top London boarding school which counts six former UK prime ministers as alumni, scrapped plans to open six new outposts in China in 2021, citing “recent changes in Chinese education policy”.
Dulwich College has also attempted to wind down some of its operations in China. The London private school said in its 2022 annual report that strategic plans for growth of its high schools in China were “scaled back in light of changing government regulations”.
‘Post-China phase’
Tristan Bunnell, an expert in international schooling and senior lecturer at the University of Bath, said that following a period of rapid expansion by UK private schools in China “I think what we’re now entering is what you might call a post-China phase”.
“Schools are trying to open branches outside China because China just isn’t attractive anymore. It’s not attractive to a global school. Investors aren’t attracted to it. The teachers are not attracted to it either, because you need expat teachers. And a lot of British don’t want to work in China anymore,” he told The Telegraph.
Harrow School and AISL Harrow were approached for comment.
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