Britain’s independent schools proudly welcome international pupils. But do shared spaces amount to integration?
My school is most vibrant at lunch. A thousand boys filter in, forming and breaking tables with jokes traveling across the hall. At a few tables near the back, some boys from Mainland China and Hong Kong sit together, speaking in Cantonese and Mandarin. The school calls this part of its international community.
Many boarding schools claim international students integrate well into their community, but can that bubble in the lunch hall be considered integration?
Britain’s independent schools host 25,526 international pupils. Of these, 6,258 are from Mainland China and 4,479are from Hong Kong, more than two in every five international boarding students. A headteacher in a Boarding Schools’ Association report said: “Getting our product right for the Chinese market is crucial.”
However, the bubble is not the students’ fault. Consider what is being asked of a fourteen-year-old arriving from Hong Kong or Suzhou: to leave everything familiar, join an English boarding school, and integrate, naturally and quickly, into a culture full of coded language and customs.
For example, the slang is constantly shifting. The word “interesting,” delivered in a certain tone by an English boy, carries a meaning not taught in English lessons. The irony, the understatement, and the performance of not trying take years to learn.
Anthropologists who study cross-cultural adaptation describe this as separation, a withdrawal when away has not been built. Integration requires effort from both sides, and proximity alone does not produce it.
I arrived at my boarding school at twelve, which is earlier than most. It was difficult, but I managed to become proper friends with English students. However, this took me a year and a half. Arriving earlier made the difference. Those who arrived at fourteen or sixteen found the window of true integration had narrowed considerably. Their social worlds formed quickly within the Chinese community, and it stayed that way.
The difference between including different passports and including people in the fabric of the place is a distinction schools do not make clearly enough. The first requires only an open, non-discriminating admissions process. The second requires an all-round well-planned integration process rather than just a shared lunch hall.
This is not to say all students from Hong Kong or Mainland China are stuck in a bubble. Some, like me, have more local friends than Chinese friends. How far integration happens ultimately falls to each individual student’s willingness.
In the prospectus, there is a photograph of the dining hall: boys of different heritages sitting at long tables implying effortless dialogue between everybody.
The school is truly international in its make-up.
What the photograph does not show is that the table on the left is speaking Cantonese, and the table on the right cannot engage with them.
Boarding Pass is a series of dispatches from inside a British fee-paying boarding school.
Aidan Leung is a sixth-former studying at a boarding school in England.
𝗙𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝘂𝗻𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗼𝗳 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗮𝗿𝗱↓
