Criticized at home, British schools prosper in SE Asia

Criticized at home, British schools prosper in SE Asia

By Joshua Kurlantzick

BANGKOK (AFP): Under fire at home, British schools are gaining
popularity in Southeast Asia, where they are making changes
schools in Britain should heed, teachers and parents have said.

Over the past six months, the British school system has come
under fire for perpetuating elitism and failing to adapt to
trends in education, such as making classrooms more child-
centered.

The controversy over schools in Britain has been highlighted
by the Laura Spence case, in which Spence, an outstanding student
at a comprehensive (state-funded) school, failed to get a place
at Oxford but was accepted at Harvard, one of America's elite
universities.

After the Spence case became public, Britain's Chancellor of
the Exchequer Gordon Brown said the United Kingdom's education
system was "an absolute scandal", unable to change its
traditional ways.

In Southeast Asia, however, schools following a British
curriculum have flourished by mixing traditional academic rigor
with a willingness to incorporate local traditions.

"The number of British schools, and the enrolment at these
schools, has grown exponentially in the past decade, as the
schools have innovatively adapted to their environments," said a
Singapore-based educational consultant.

At Dulwich International School, located on the southern
Thailand island of Phuket -- built to represent the original
school in London -- enrolment has mushroomed from 76 pupils in
1996 to 460 in 2000.

At Harrow International School Bangkok, a branch of its famous
British namesake founded in 1572, there is a waiting list for
places, headmaster Stuart Morris told AFP.

Harrow International's enrolment figures have risen faster
than expected, despite the fact that the school does not yet have
a permanent campus in Thailand, said a Hong Kong-based
consultant.

And several renowned UK schools plan to set up franchises in
Malaysia within the next five years.

Parents and teachers attribute the success of British
education in Southeast Asia to a more relaxed approach than the
elitist and staid UK system, they said.

"Here in Bangkok, we offer more than the UK schools. We take
girls, we take day students, in order to cater to the Thai
mindset of wanting their children to remain close to the family,"
said Harrow deputy headmaster David Foster.

In Britain, Harrow is a male-only institution and all of its
pupils are boarders.

"We try to be innovative in teaching our students about the
local communities around the schools, so they are not out of
touch with daily life outside the 'ivory tower'," Foster said.

"Some of the British schools in Southeast Asia seem to do a
better job than their parents in Britain at modernizing in step
with the times," said one Bangkok-based educational consultant.

To integrate its students with the outside community, Harrow
International encourages them to develop their own projects,
studying their local environment and culture.

But some educational consultants accuse British schools in
Southeast Asia of overcharging for the quality of instruction
they provide.

"Compare the number of teachers at these Asia British-
curriculum schools who have graduate degrees and ten plus years
of experience with the numbers at schools in the UK, and the
schools in Asia come out badly," said one consultant. "Yet the
schools in Asia charge eight to ten thousand dollars per year, an
exorbitant price."