Private schools in the United Kingdom are gradually going into the hands of new owners, who are actually Chinese investors. More than thirty independent schools have been bought in the past decade by them, while many big purchases are in the pipeline.
Officials within the Department for Education and security services are concerned by the development but are unable to put China on the existing list of countries that pose a risk to the UK’s national security, reported The Times.
A senior government source speaking to the media outlet highlighted how the Chinese are doing all the things that Britain did as an empire.
“China is playing the long game and doing all the things we used to do as an empire. They targeted universities before but have realised it’s easier to start younger. It’s ideological warfare. These children will grow up and be helpful to the Communist Party,” said the source.
Britain’s “world-leading education system has made it an obvious target for influence” for China, said Phil Brickell, a Labour MP who sits on the foreign affairs committee. He vouched for the education system to be protected and said that British governments for a long time “have misunderstood the strategic threat posed by China”, which needs to be addressed immediately.
There is a high demand for British education among Chinese families that has driven Chinese investors to acquire private schools in Britain, reveals an analysis published last year by a Beijing-based company called Venture Education .
Number of schools acquired
Between 2017 and 2020, 17 schools were bought by Chinese investors who focused on buying “distressed schools” and fill them with Chinese students or use the brand in China, said the report.
Since 2022 there has been an increase in the pace of acquisitions. According to the report Chinese investors bought 30 schools by the end of last year.
Julian Fisher, co-founder and senior consultant at Venture Education that supports British schools and universities in China insisted that the purchases are mostly commercial in nature.
“In most cases these are distressed assets, which are seemingly cheap to Chinese investors: a couple of million pounds is a drop in the ocean to a billion-dollar real estate company,” he said
“There is certainly a prestige element to the purchases too, perhaps akin to Gulf royals buying historic houses in the UK in the early eighties,” Fisher added.
China is the biggest source of non-British pupils whose parents live overseas and accounts for 6,258 of the 25,526 pupils in this category, according to the Independent Schools Council census published in April this year, reported The Times.