Britain’s independent schools have begun looking to India as a likely source of revenue now that the global financial crisis is hitting cash-strapped UK families. At a time when the government is borrowing billions to cut taxes to stave off a deep recession, one head of a major private school said he was flying out to the booming country next spring (April) as part of a pupil recruitment drive. Stephen Winkley, who recently visited China to promote his school, said he was having to deal with ever more UK families worried about how to pay their child’s school fees: “I’m seeing one set of parents a week who are saying they’re running out of cash.”
Comments Dr. Winkley, the former head of Uppingham School in Rutland and now in charge at the £25,000-a-year (Rs.16.4 lakh) Rossall School in Lancashire: “The obvious source of revenue will be from overseas. India is the next new marketplace. The worry is the ripple could turn into a wave because schools here need a solid base of English pupils to give a taste of what an English school is like.”
The latest figures from the Independent Schools Council show that nearly 3,000 new pupils joined the UK’s independent schools in 2008 from traditional feeder countries China and Hong Kong. But fewer than 100 new pupils came from India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
Vicky Tuck, chair of the Girls’ School Association and principal of Cheltenham Ladies’ College, which charges boarders up to £28,500 (Rs.18.6 lakh) a year, predicts that more parents in emerging markets such as India would send their children to be educated in England. “There are many, many people over there who want to learn English and receive a good education,” says Tuck adding that the economic downturn had not had much of an impact on finances so far because fees had been paid for in advance. But she warns: “Next September is going to be more telling. Only an ostrich would be blasé about the recession.”
(Excerpted and adapted from Times Education Supplement)