THE PAST two years has been a booming period for privately owned international schools in Shenzhen, but quality has begun to worry some parents as well as education experts, the Guangzhou Daily reported.

    Statistics show that more than 10 international schools have opened in the past two years in Shenzhen, but some did not survive for even one year, and some are crowded with parents who wish to pay high tuition fees for places for their children.

    The international schools have various financial sponsors and backgrounds. Some schools have financial groups or real estate companies backing them. For instance, the Bromsgrove School Mission Hills is an international school co-founded by the Mission Hills Education Group and the time-honored Bromsgrove School in the U.K.

    Yet not every international school is taken care of financially. For instance, a new school named Advanced International Education was purchased by Weiming Education Group only six months after it announced it was recruiting students.

    The report disclosed that many international schools had rushed to open and enroll students even before their faculty was fully prepared to teach, which caused many enrolled students and employed teachers to quit not long after they had entered the schools.

    Chenghan International School Shenzhen is one international school that enjoys a good reputation in the city. However, like some other international schools in Shenzhen, its management team has remained unstable since it opened in September last year.

    According to tip-offs provided by insiders, the first principal of the school, Liu Qiuyun, resigned from his post at the end of last year, because his educational philosophies failed to meet with the investor’s ideologies. The first executive principal, Xu Kajia, also left one year after the school had opened.

    The current principal, Zheng Huiyi, took over the post after being principal at another newly opened school, RDF International School, for only a short time.

    Another example is Zhu Yuan, an education expert who was awarded a national lifetime prize for his talent in education. He left the school he had founded, Shenzhen Academy of International Education, after only one-year service. The academy was allegedly providing unsatisfactory education while overcharging its students earlier this year.

    According to the report, not only were the schools questioned for their unstable management teams and inconsistent quality, but the students who attend these private schools also were found to represent a variety of levels of academic performance.

    For instance, the Shenzhen College of International Education, founded in 2003, was reputed among Shenzhen students and their parents. On average, 20 graduating students from the school would receive offers from the world’s top universities, like Oxford University and Cambridge University, each year.

    Thus, a large number of students from Shenzhen and other places in China compete for places in the school’s selection examination every year.

    However, not every international school appeals to good students, and many are finding it difficult to enroll enough students for the new school year.

    Ding Hui, principal of C-UK College Shenzhen, said that kindergartens and elementary schools with international classes normally do not worry about the number of students, but when it comes to secondary schools, some lower quality schools are having difficulty enrolling enough students.

    A parent, surnamed Xu, whose child is attending an international school, said that he had done research on many international schools in Shenzhen and found that quite a few of them cannot provide a quality education to their students, because they do not have systematic curriculums or stable faculties.

    Xu said that some secondary school students choose to study at these international schools, because they can hardly get high enough scores on the National College Entrance Exams to attend quality universities in China, so they have to turn to the international schools and study abroad after graduation.

    Though the international schools in Shenzhen appear to be of inconsistent quality, there are an increasing number of new international schools set up each year.

    Experts consider that the competitive environment for entrance into top public high schools, the large number of children born with Hong Kong permanent residence but with parents based in Shenzhen, as well as the desire many parents have for international education, are all factors driving the booming market for international schools.

    (Zhang Qian)