ÌÇÐÄVlog

At the HMC conference in Manchester last week one of the topics of conversation among international heads was prominent UK independent schools opening overseas campuses at a pace never seen before.

Brighton College alone is opening three new campuses in Madrid, Rome and Lisbon to join its seven existing international schools, while household names like Harrow School, Epsom College, Dulwich College, Rugby School, Cranleigh School, Repton School and more continue to establish footholds in dynamic markets like the UAE, South-East Asia and beyond.

Educating pupils in far-flung, international settings might feel like a bold new frontier for these well-established British institutions, many of which boast centuries of heritage at home.

Yet long before global educational franchising became a lucrative business strategy, a completely different breed of British heritage schools took root across the world.

The early pioneers (1838-1950s)

The story of the origins of British overseas schooling begins with community necessity.

As UK trade links, diplomatic missions and expat populations expanded throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, dedicated communities stepped up to provide an education grounded in their native language and values.

As early as 1838, St Andrew’s Scots School, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, was founded to educate a community of Scottish settlers who wanted their children’s schooling rooted in Scottish heritage and language.

In 1898 St George’s College, also in the province of Buenos Aires, was established to serve the growing British expatriate community in South America. In 1900 The English School, in Nicosia, Cyprus, was built to deliver classic British education in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Tanglin Trust School, in Singapore, opened in 1925 to cater for British families living and working in South-East Asian trade hubs, while in 1946 Alice Smith School, in Malaysia, started in a living room in Kuala Lumpur to serve expat families after the Second World War.

In 1957 Bangkok Patana School was established to support the rapid influx of foreign diplomats and international professionals in Thailand.

European growth between and after the wars (1920s-1970s)

The notable non-profit British schools in Europe, such as The British School in the Netherlands, St Julian’s School (Portugal), The British School of Paris, St George’s British International School (Rome), The British School of Milan and The British School of Brussels, emerged in two distinct waves.

The first was during the interwar period (1920s-1930s) and the second was during the post-Second World War European integration boom (1950s-1970s), driven by expanding diplomat, military and multinational corporate communities.

The oil boom wave (1960s-1970s)

In the 1960s and 1970s the economic centre of gravity shifted towards the Middle East following the expansion of the energy sector, and, with this, a second wave of foundational schools emerged.

Institutions like The English School Kuwait, St Christopher’s School Bahrain, Dubai English Speaking School, Doha English Speaking School, The British School Al Khubairat (Abu Dhabi), British International School Jeddah, Doha College, Dubai College and The British School Muscat were established directly alongside the rise of oil exploration.

Two key distinctions

All of these schools were built on two fundamental pillars:

Diplomatic and civic foundations: these schools were not launched as outposts of a UK parent campus but established directly through local governments or sovereign rulers, working in close coordination with British embassies to serve the diplomatic and expat communities of the host country.

Not-for-profit DNA: unlike equity-backed schools, 100 per cent of money generated goes straight back into the school’s resources, such as facilities, teacher salaries and student requirements in the school.

This is a unique selling point that these long-established standalone schools may not necessarily have promoted as effectively as they could, perhaps due to a previous lack of competition in their local market.

Conversely, while many independent schools opening overseas send a portion of income back to their UK private school centre, which, as it operates under charitable status is also not-for-profit, the money then remains in the UK and an additional portion of income goes to its local business partner as a profit share or dividend, ultimately reducing what could be reinvested into the overseas campus.

The changing landscape

Of course, markets change all the time and the era that paved the way for the original international schools has come and gone and a new world now exists.

Many of these modern schools - whether private school franchises or those within large equity-backed groups - have expanded educational access for hundreds of thousands of children worldwide.

They provide high-quality facilities, strong academic standards and recognised pathways to world-class universities.

Yet as new names arrive in major cities every year, it is worth pausing to recognise the standalone heritage institutions that paved the way, educating generations of global leaders and standing long before international expansion became big business. However the world changes, they will continue to educate for centuries more to come.

Mark Leppard MBE has been headmaster of The British School Al Khubairat in the United Arab Emirates since 2015