Guide launches for Chinese parents seeking good UK and US schools

Ti Gong

With China attracting more and more British groups coming to recruit international students, the Good Schools Guide launched a Chinese version of its website to serve Chinese parents and their children.

The original Good Schools Guide is a popular platform for British parents to seek information about schools for their children, offering basic information, features, plus student and parent reviews on most schools in the UK through print publications and its website.

The recently launched Chinese website, created by the British version operator and educational service provider BE Education, covers schools both in the UK and America, as both are popular overseas study destinations for Chinese families. Up until now, it has published information about 460 boarding schools.

The website is expected to break through the language barrier to ease the information asymmetry between Chinese parents and international schools, offering more transparent information for them and related agencies.

Phoenix Feng, who is looking for a school in America for her grade seven son, said she was glad to see such a website.

“The Chinese website is helpful for me in grasping information about foreign schools as I’m not confident in my English competence,” she said. “There are not only introductions on schools, but also personal stories of students on the website. We can learn from their experiences.”

But she said she would still turn to agencies for help.

“Information alone is not enough for applying to a school,” she said. “I believe it's more efficient to have assistance from professional and experienced agencies in application. They would not only tell us about schools, but also analyze my son’s advantages and disadvantages, give suggestions on improvement and even arrange travel to the schools.”