If i could give Hong Kong families one piece of advice for choosing a UK school, it would be this – look beyond the league tables and exam results.
Choosing a school is more than just a numbers game. It’s about finding a good match between the personality of the pupil and the personality of the school – its size, its ethos, its aims and its community.
This is what leads to a happy and successful education. Many of you will have heard me say this before, but it can never be said too often.
This job of match-making between a pupil and a school partly comes down to the parents, since they know their own child better than anyone.
So just as parents must look beyond the numbers, the agencies informing them must do the same thing. They must build their own school networks based on quality and diversity. Then, they can pass on the benefits of such a network to the families who consult them.
Although I’m extremely proud of the numbers we have achieved at Britannia Studylink recently – over 700 students confirmed for entry at UK boarding schools this coming September, and a predicted, ongoing contribution of over 50 percent of all Hong Kong pupils studying at UK boarding schools – this is not what I’m most proud of.
What I’m most proud of is the school network that we have built and the diversity of the schools within that network.
If a school agency only deals with the famous schools, the big names and the mainstream choices, then sure, it can look impressive on websites and glossy brochures.
However, the fact is that this approach can actually lead to unhappy pupils and school hopping. Just because, say, Eton College is world-famous or Rugby School gave its name to a sport, or some other school sends the most students to Oxford University in a given year, this doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s automatically the best place for every child.
There is really no such thing as the overall best school. What there is, though, is the best school for an individual student.
It is because of this that we are now working with such a wide range of schools at Britannia, including those in the most rural parts of England, Scotland and Wales.
We have, for example, pupils at Strathallan School, a boarding school just a few kilometers south of Perth in Scotland.
Then, over in St Andrews, we have pupils at St Leonards School – the first accredited all-through International Baccalaureate school in Scotland.
All the way at the other end of the UK, down in Cornwall, we have pupils at Truro School – a school that offers over 100 clubs for co-curricular activities.
And in the east of the country, in Norfolk, we have pupils at Gresham’s School and Beeston Hall School, a prep boarding school for primary education with flexible boarding arrangements.
These are just a few examples to illustrate the sort of diversity that I believe an insightful agency really needs to offer families in order to be effective.
If you would like more information about UK schools, both boarding schools and day schools for those currently looking at pathways to British citizenship, you can contact my team at Britannia Studylink or visit our website at www.britannia-study.com