Britain's Growing Business With China — Education Services

As the Chinese student marketplace continues to grow, so are the services surrounding it — from the research to provision to student recruitment to financial transactions.

 

If choosing a UK university, Higher Education institutions in the UK are now often not the first taste of a British style education for many Chinese students — the rise of top tier British schools opening in China has been well publicised with Dulwich leading the way in 2004, closely followed by Harrow in 2005 — and whilst the British schools’ market in China is still young, ISC Research, which tracks development in the worldwide international schools’ market, reports that China now leads the world for English-medium international schools with 806. A small number of these are schools for expatriate children, but increasingly, they are aligned to Chinese investors in order to offer a Western independent school learning approach to Chinese nationals. Their reputation as pathways to some of the very top universities in Britain, Australia and the United States, ensures that demand for places continues to exceed supply, even in those schools with the very highest of fees. (ISC Research November 2017).

 

The first cohort of students finishing their secondary education will give an indicator as to whether this increase in British style educational provision in China will increase the flow of students going to British universities — is this a new market for UK based universities to capture, are these new schools serving a market which is looking for new pathways and better access into international HE or is it merely an opportunity for these students to take advantage of a British style education because it is being offered in their home country? Time will tell, but the demand is there on the ground and HE providers are following suit — amongst others, Liverpool and Nottingham operate campuses in China and most recently Leicester in 2017 joined the club.

 

UK based independent boarding schools are also filling places with more international students — expanding the student recruitment agents’ market and capturing more students earlier on in their learning journey than ever. One of these, BE Education, founded in 2003 by ex Etonian William Van Bergen with an aim to offer British education to wealthy Chinese families, in 2017 secured £54 million of new capital from backers including Asian investors. The international student recruitment market is buoyant and where students were previously more often captured at the point of entering tertiary education, many schools now employ international admissions staff to attract the best students earlier.

 

The desire of Chinese parents for a Western higher education experience for their children has fueled the growth of British education, both in and out of China. According to ISC Research, the demand is expected to rise significantly. "Most parents in the middle and upper strata of Chinese society want their children to get the best education that they can afford. Research has shown that education is the last category of expenditure that parents cut when they suffer economic hardship. In other words, spending on education in Asia is very resilient. Conversely, education is the most likely category of expenditure to be increased when parents' incomes grow” Richard Gaskell, Schools Director ISC Research.
 
The rise in spending on education in China is indeed mirroring a phase of increased affluence in the country. At the top end of the scale, the number of USD-millionaires in China has grown. In 2015 there were 1.3 million and by 2017 this had increased to 1.6 million. But it is not just the Chinese elite who have more money to spend on education — household incomes in most Chinese cities have been increasing between 6% and 7% each year since 2010, a trend that seems likely to continue.

 

As the number of international students benefiting from a British education, not only from and in China but also worldwide grows, so does the value and the mass of transactions being made, often where parties are unfamiliar with international transactions and obtaining best value exchange. Services to specifically cover this section of the growing international education market, both for the educational provider and the consumer, will undoubtedly be a point of interest for financial institutions.
 

Country	2015-16	2014-15	2013-14
China (PRC)	91,215	89,540	87,895
Malaysia	17,405	17,060	16,635
United States of America	17,115	16,865	16,485
India	16,745	18,320	19,750
Hong Kong (Special Administrative Region)	16,745	16,215	14,725
Nigeria	16,100	17,920	18,020
Saudi Arabia	8,570	8,595	9,060
Singapore	7,540	7,295	6,790
Thailand	6,095	6,240	6,340
Canada	5,980	6,075	6,350