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."