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International schools grapple with 'staggering' demand
HONG KONG At the start of the latest school semester, 309 children in primary and secondary school were put onto a waiting list for a valued place in the Hong Kong International School - one of only two offering an American curriculum in a city teeming with expatriate professionals.
With no room to expand, the school, with more than 2,600 students and 480 staff on two separate campuses is unlikely to see a reduction in the size of the waiting list any time soon.
"We have severe waiting lists in certain grades," said Richard Mueller, the school's director. "It's a dilemma because it is not nice to turn students away."
The dire shortage of international school places in Hong Kong is the consequence of a global phenomenon: the huge and rapidly rising demand for international education.
The economic rise of Asia and other parts of developing world and the growth of international commerce have drawn millions of people to the expatriate life, and they have brought their children with them. Prosperity in developing countries is also manifesting itself in higher educational aspirations among local people. Many want their children to benefit from the better quality education and college opportunities available within the international school system.
But the unprecedented demand for international school places around the world is putting enormous strains on the system itself. Qualified teachers are in short supply; many schools are at or over capacity; student-teacher ratios are coming under pressure; teaching resources are sometimes stretched; competition is driving up the costs of attracting the best staff; and, ultimately, costs of education may have to rise significantly.
Then there is the issue of security. With fears that schools could be terrorist targets, especially since the Beslan massacre two years ago in Russia, international schools in many countries now resemble heavily guarded embassies. Children go to school behind barbed wire, under the gaze of closed-circuit television cameras. Schools in vulnerable parts of Asia and the Middle East say they are spending up to $300,000 a year on security in addition to expensive building upgrades like building blast walls and bomb-proofing windows.
But anxiety over security has done nothing to dampen the growth in the number of children seeking places.
"It's staggering," said Robert Sills, executive director of the East Asia Regional Council for Overseas Schools, commenting on the level of demand. "It's a reflection of the economic engine in Asia, which is very powerful."
Sills's organization, based in Laguna in the Philippines, provides professional support and training to administrators and teachers at 103 international schools in Asia. When he did the latest calculations last week on current enrollments among member schools, he could not believe the results. For the 2005 to 2006 school year, the student population was up 22.4 percent on a year earlier, to 68,557. Even subtracting students from the three schools that joined last year, the growth in student numbers was still about 14 percent.
Asia, particularly China, has been leading the growth in international education. But elsewhere, the picture is similar. Although few professional organizations keep data on enrollments, interviews with international school heads confirm strong growth in demand.
One measure of the growth is the number of new international schools opening their doors. No single organization keeps track of all international schools around the world, but the experience of the Commission on American and International Schools Abroad, based in Bedford, Massachusetts, is illustrative of a global trend. In its first 20 years of life, the commission accredited 46 schools with an American curriculum in countries in Europe, Africa and Asia. Since 2001, it has accredited another 76 schools and it has a current list of 24 candidates awaiting accreditation.
While not all these schools are new, the numbers are indicative of what teacher recruitment agencies and international school associations say is a rapid growth in the number of new schools. By one estimate, 100 new international schools opened last year.
Pete Woodward, director of the commission, described the growth in new schools in recent years as "very significant."
International schools can come in several forms. Most of the bigger schools offering either a European or a North American curriculum are not-for-profit and often have a loose association with their respective foreign embassies.
But private foundations and businesses are also taking advantage of new opportunities to expand. It is a big market. It is estimated there are about 3,000 schools around the world that could be classed as international based on the student body, curriculum and language of instruction. The 400 schools of the European Council of International Schools have 245,000 students enrolled in 88 countries.
To meet demand from locals for an international education, national schools in some countries are trying to attract foreign teachers and offer programs like the International Baccalaureate, an interdisciplinary curriculum culminating in an intensive two-year diploma program.
With a booming economy and influx of foreign investors, China has been one of the big drivers of growth in new schools.
David Shawyer, who is director of the American International School in Guangzhou, southern China, said the number of schools belonging to the Association of China and Mongolia International Schools had grown from 5 to 35 in the past seven years. Enrollments at his own school have jumped to 800 students from 250 over the same period.
"It's really explosive in some cities, particularly Beijing and Shanghai," he said.
It is difficult for schools and teacher recruitment agencies to keep pace with demand. In the major recruitment grounds of the English- speaking world, agencies specializing in the placement of international school teachers say they are being forced to widen searches, like recruiting directly from campuses, and try more imaginative marketing approaches to find enough candidates.
The biggest problem is simply a teacher shortage in the main source countries, like the United States, Britain, Canada and Australia. Teachers of physics, chemistry and information technology are the hardest to find.
There are also shortages of counselors and even modern language teachers. Shawyer, head of the Guangzhou school, said his problem, strangely, was finding Mandarin language teachers in China with the right teaching qualifications.
"There are a lot of teachers out there, but not many that are ready to teach in the international classroom," he said, referring to the training and language ability required.
Recruiters say the problem for recruitment at international schools is compounded because teachers are becoming more reluctant to travel, either because of security concerns or improved wages and conditions at home.
"The countries that are hardest to fill obviously are the ones where there is trouble or countries close to where there is trouble," said David Cope, a partner in Cambridge, England, with Search Associates, one of the two biggest teacher placement agencies. "Anytime there is a bomb somewhere, you get a dip."
So far, most schools, particularly those in popular destinations like Western Europe, have been able to draw on an adequate talent pool, but if the teacher shortage in source countries continues, even the best schools in the most attractive locations could find recruitment a bigger issue.
Recruiters and school administrators say that among the consequences could be the inability to offer all the courses or services schools would like. It could also force administrators either to increase waiting lists or to reassess existing student-teacher ratios of about 10 to 1.
"There are some areas or programs that schools want to offer but where there may not be the category or quality of people available when they need them, especially in the specialized areas," said Joan Adams, vice president of International Schools Services, a recruitment agency based in Princeton, New Jersey.
Budgets could also come under greater pressure. Most of the mainstream international schools are non-profit and have worked hard to avoid large increases in tuition fees. But salaries generally account for 65 percent of school budgets, and attracting the best teaching staff is becoming more expensive.
"If other schools offer higher salaries, better financial packages, we will start to find ourselves having a harder time competing," said Mark Olderog, superintendent of the John F. Kennedy School in Berlin, one of the oldest in Europe offering an American curriculum.
The answer for many schools might be substantially higher fees. In order to expand facilities, add programs or increase teacher salaries, the schools need either to increase enrollment, if they have the space, or to raise fees. For parents and employers that pay the education expenses of expatriates' children, overseas tuition costs are already regarded as high. The basic tuition fee for a final-year student at Hong Kong International School is 152,800 Hong Kong dollars this year, or about $19,300.
That is, if the student can get a place. Mueller, the school director, said he was pressing the Hong Kong government to provide some vacant land adjacent to the senior school campus to allow for an expansion that would reduce the long waiting list. Providing new places, he argued, is in the city's own economic interests.
"We had some American families - people coming to Hong Kong to work - saying they are deferring plans or looking elsewhere in Asia because they can't get a school place," he said.
By Donald Greenlees International Herald Tribune
Published: September 29, 2006
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