A costly education

Despite exorbitant fees, many Chinese-run international schools do not adequately prepare students for study abroad

Despite spending three years in one of Beijing's pricey Chinese-run international schools, when 18-year-old Samantha Liu was finally admitted into the hallowed halls of Indiana's Purdue University last year, she found herself foundering.

"Currently, my grades are the third lowest in our class," said Liu, who is pursuing a major in education. "I'm worried that I might be thrown out of the university if I keep this up, then I won't be able to get into a grad school and stay in America," she said.

Liu, who asked for her English name to be used due to concerns that her comments would negatively affect her, attended a Chinese-run international school in Shunyi district that offers the Australian Curriculum. She requested that the name of the school also be omitted for the same reasons.

Francis Pang, chairman of the Canadian International School of Beijing (CISB), said that most foreigner-run international schools do not accept Chinese students, or only have a very small quota for Chinese students. CISB only accepts two Chinese students for each grade, according to Pang, with the rest of enrolment filled up by students holding foreign passports.

Zhang Fan, a manager at Beijing New Oriental School which provides training for SAT, GRE and TOEFL exams, said that while many Chinese-run international schools taught foreign curricula, they did not offer a Western-style education. He explained that although they were often successful in helping students to attain the grades they required to be admitted to an overseas university, they often did not provide a well-rounded education, meaning that their students would be woefully unprepared for studying abroad.

"Most Chinese-run international schools offer only five main subjects, because it gives them the best chance of improving their students' grades so they can get into a good university abroad," said Zhang. "[Most of them] remain beholden to the exam-oriented culture of Chinese education."

Zhang's claims were borne out by Liu's experiences.

"The school only offered five subjects: English, math, physics, chemistry, and physical education. They never once offered subjects like politics, history or art," said Liu.

Consequently, she said, she was unfamiliar with basic historical and political concepts that she was expected to know.

"My university history professor gave us a reading list of 30 books for the past semester. At the school I attended in Beijing, nobody required us to read a single book," said Liu, whose education at the Chinese-run international school cost her parents more than $80,000 for the three years she spent there. "I only managed to finish five of the books from the [university course] reading list, and I did miserably in the exams."

The myth of a better education

One of the readings she said she particularly struggled with was Alexis de Tocqueville's seminal political treatise Democracy in America. Liu said she had never come across the idea of the separation of powers, a political concept that is familiar to most students who have grown up in the US.

"I can't even compete with my friends who attended public schools in China. I once looked down upon them, but now I kind of envy them," said Liu. "At least they know what Marxism is, or what the separation of powers is. They can have a proper conversation with people when the topics come up," she said.

Even at Chinese-run international schools that do offer a more diverse curriculum however, there is no guarantee that students are getting a better education, according to a former student.

William Ai, an 18-year-old who went to a Chinese-run international school in Changping district which offered a diverse range of classes including US history and comparative politics, said that the perception that Chinese-run international schools provide much the same education as students might receive at schools overseas was false.

"Only half of our classes are taught by foreign teachers, so a lot of the classes are actually conducted by Chinese teachers in Chinese," said Ai, who is waiting to hear back about his application to Rutgers University in the US. "Without the language, what's the difference between international schools and Chinese public schools?"

The most frustrating part however, according to Ai, was the constant turnover of teachers from year to year. As the course content at his school was determined by each teacher, Ai said, there was consequently no continuity to his education.

"The foreign teaching staff changes every year. One batch leaves and another batch arrives," said Ai. "Each teacher's approach is very different. So whenever the teacher changed, my grades would drop a little, until I got used to the teacher. But then as soon as I got used to the new teacher, he or she would leave," Ai said.