ELITE British schools are setting up in China to feed a growing appetite for public school education as expectations grow that a ban on foreigners and Chinese studying together will be lifted.

Making the running is Dulwich College International School in Shanghai, which will be the first of four schools that the 400-year-old institution is setting up in China.

The South London school, which already has an international school at Phuket in Thailand, is not alone in looking eastwards for future growth. Harrow and Shrewsbury have schools in Bangkok.

At Dulwich in Shanghai, students will wear a formal uniform of shirt, tie and jacket, with grey slacks, raising the prospect of blazers and school ties on Shanghai’s promenade, the Bund, for the first time since the Second World War.

“The numbers are looking extremely good. There is clearly a very good awareness of British education,” said Graham Able, Master of Dulwich College, whose old boys include the writers Raymond Chandler and P. G. Wodehouse, Sir Edward George, the former Governor of the Bank of England, and the comedian Bob Monkhouse.

The communists banned foreign missionary schools shortly after taking power in 1949 and have barred Chinese students from studying with Westerners ever since. But Mr Able and other leading educationists believe that that could change.

“The system will not allow Chinese nationals below the age of 15½ to study at international schools. We believe that may be changing. The indications are that they will be allowed,” he said. Education is big business in China. In 2002 Chinese consumers spent more than £22 billion on education and some experts predict that figure could rise to about £50 billion next year. United Nations data shows that the average Chinese family saves 10 per cent of its income for education.

Foreign-run schools are expected to be a fast-growing market once the Government allows other interested groups to build new schools. The Shanghai venture is considered to be a test case. Initially the schools will cater to the children of expatriates and Chinese people with Hong Kong, Taiwan or foreign passports.

By the end of 2006 Dulwich expects to have more than 700 students following essentially the same curriculum as in the United Kingdom, with an emphasis on academic achievement and all-round development in culture and sports.

Parents are looking for a style of teaching that differs from traditional Chinese-style education, Mr Able said. Where Chinese education favours rote-learning, Dulwich plans to offer more creative and open-ended methods, with a focus on problem-solving. “The combination makes the students very attractive to top universities,” he said.

The students will follow the English national curriculum, but will take the international baccalaureat rather than A levels as their university entrance exam.

The first Dulwich college opens in Shanghai on August 26, although junior pupils are already being taught there; a second college will open in the city of Suzhou in Jiangsu province in 2005, in a joint venture with an 800-year-old school there, Suzhou Middle School. Dulwich will add a third when Beijing opens within a year or two, and a fourth will open in southern China, probably in Shenzen, near Hong Kong.

Lisa Hutton’s six-year-old son, Rory, will join the school in the new school year. “The main thing is its reputation in the UK . . . We like the fact it provides a British-style education with an international flavour,” she said.

Chinese parents are also interested. Yao Liping, 42, a hotel manager, said: “My son is 14 and he is in middle school. I think international schools educate young people using foreign principles or patterns. They teach students common sense and about the real world, and they also equip them to deal with problems they might meet in later life. The schools attach importance to students’ creative ability.”

Cong Jun, 36, who works for a joint venture company, has a daughter in second grade at a Chinese primary school. He admires the global perspective that international schools can impart to their students.

“Chinese education is composed of one exam after another, so schools don’t attach importance to the personality and hobbies of students. Because there are students from many countries in the international schools, children will naturally pick up the idea that every nation is equal. And they will understand that ideas about friendship and culture go beyond national borders,” he said.

Because of the ban on Chinese and foreign students studying together, Shanghai Dulwich will offer separate classes initially, taught in either Chinese or English. However, there is widespread confidence that the ban will be lifted as China continues to open up to the outside world.

Tony Blair inaugurated the school during a four-hour stopover in Shanghai last September. The Headmaster of Dulwich in Shanghai is Colin Niven, who taught Mr Blair French and German at Fettes College in Scotland.

Mr Niven, himself an Old Alleynian, as Dulwich old boys are called, said: “This whole education boom in China is very exciting. It’s one of those things that everyone benefits from. The school is genuinely idealistic and it is sincerely not a money-grabbing operation. Every penny of the profits that Dulwich earns goes directly back into scholarships for those who can’t afford to go to Dulwich. I was one; my father was a policeman.”

The Shanghai campus is expected to cost about £5.5 million. The investors are Shanghai-based Global Education Information Consulting, a foreign-owned investment company, and Saha Union, a Thai company run by Anand Panyarachun, a former Prime Minister of Thailand.

Private education is expensive in China and is one of the main reasons that cities such as Beijing and Shanghai regularly feature near the top of the “world’s most expensive cities” lists, even though other areas of life are cheaper.

Tuition plus enrolment at the top private international schools in Beijing runs at £11,000 a year and the fees at Dulwich Shanghai will be about the same for Western students. Fees for Chinese students will be lower at £2,800.

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