Browse the website of the Independent Schools Council (ISC), which represents some 1,400 schools teaching around 500,000 children, and it will tell you there are 26,195 overseas pupils at its UK member schools. They make up 4.7 per cent of the total student population.
The cosy percentages belie the truth. For rather like the growing importance of foreign students in keeping our universities financially afloat, so there are swathes of overseas pupils enrolled at public schools providing a similar financial cushion. And that was true even before the Labour government slapped 20 per cent VAT on the entire sector.
Concerns were already being raised that the level of foreign students was reaching a point where it was beginning to undermine the unique selling point of British public schools – namely that they are British, rather than simply being more generic, globalised international schools.
So what’s the true picture? A quick survey of public schools – particularly boarding schools – shows a much higher level of international participation than the ISC’s figure. At Bristol’s Clifton College, for example, 20 per cent of pupils are from overseas, ‘representing over 40 different countries’. Likewise, at Felsted School in Essex, its overseas intake is 20 per cent. At my alma mater, Ardingly College in West Sussex (located conveniently for Gatwick airport), around 25 per cent of the school is from overseas.
Even those numbers don’t quite tell you the true story. The reason is that the overseas cohort is overwhelmingly concentrated among a school’s boarders. As a result, education consultant Matthew Goldie-Smith says, you might discover that 30 or even 40 per cent of the boarding population of a given school is made up of international pupils. What’s more, of these more than half could quite easily come from one country – increasingly China. ‘That’s a problem,’ says Goldie-Smith, ‘because if you’re a family from mainland China and you’re sending your children to a British boarding school, in part it’s because you want cultural and language immersion, and you won’t be getting that if there are a lot of pupils from the same country. It’s also a challenge if you’re not an international pupil, or if you’re an English native speaker in a boarding house, and you’re one of the few children in the boarding house who are not from that one source country. There aren’t really any winners there.’
‘What makes a British school isn’t just about values or rules. It’s about how robust the education is’
When up to one in four pupils in the school is from overseas there is the genuine risk that the shared culture of the school will be changed. Which is ironic, since international parents are often attracted to the British school system because of those cultural enrichments – things like chapel, cadet corps parades, traditions and ceremonies, plus the wearing of uniform and seasonal sports such as cricket. If these fall away, it will be a bit like those idyllic Cornish fishing villages where there are only bankers at the weekends. It doesn’t quite work any more.
Unsurprisingly, a lot of schools are squeamish about discussing their number of international pupils. When they do, you’ll notice that they tend to stress the number of countries these pupils are from.
While the tension between the need for foreign pupils vs the loss of ‘Britishness’ is real enough, it’s actually the optics of the tension that are even worse. ‘It’s similar to a conversation we’ve been having about universities and it’s that narrative which a lot of independent schools don’t want to engage in,’ one wise schoolmaster tells me.
Another points out that international pupils needn’t undermine a school’s existing distinctiveness – so long as the parents and would-be pupils are aligned. ‘I make sure they understand the heritage of the school and what our values and rules are before they come over, so when they do come it’s with open eyes,’ he tells me. ‘It means they’ll be happy when they go because they’re not being mis-sold a product.’
For all of the potential harm of seeing the Carutherses, Sidebottoms, Joneses and Browns vanish from the register, this educationalist is not worried by the reliance on foreign pupils. Citing strong exam boards, the depth of A-level syllabuses, the integrity offered by unseen papers and the expertise of our teaching profession, he insists there is more to our schools than chapel, croquet and crumpets. ‘What makes a British school isn’t just about values or rules,’ he says. ‘It’s about how robust the education is.’
The all-boy Sherborne School in Somerset reports having a very respectable 11 per cent of international pupils out of its 575-strong, mainly boarding, population. Headmaster Matthew Jamieson, however, is well aware of the challenges facing the sector. He recalls noticing how visiting parents at a school he worked at previously looked at house photos to see how many international boarders there really were. ‘There is a tipping point,’ he says, albeit one you can’t put a blunt number on. ‘There is that tension but I would emphasise there are genuine benefits of having international pupils.’
His advice to prospective parents is to probe the figures that a school presents. ‘Look beyond the average number because it can be concentrated or diluted,’ he cautions. ‘Go and speak to the housemasters, go into the houses and speak to the boys that you meet there. That’s the only way that parents are going to tell. Look under the bonnet.’
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