When Elizabethan actor and entre-preneur Ned Alleyn founded Dulwich College in London in 1619, with letters patent from King James I, it is unlikely he foresaw that nearly 400 years later it would be setting up in China. The prestigious private school, along with even more illustrious educational establishments such as Eton and Harrow, has for centuries been the breeding ground of Britain's elite, boasting among its former students writers Raymond Chandler and P.G. Wodehouse, as well as former Bank of England governor Sir Eddie George.
For centuries the schools have been the epitome
of Britain's class structure, where well-to-do parents sent their children as boarders to prepare them for Oxford or Cambridge universities and, they hoped, distinguished careers as doctors, diplomats or even prime ministers. Fastidiously traditional, such schools are synonymous with images of uniformed students playing rugby and cricket, and getting up to jolly japes that could lead to a caning in the headmaster's office. This romantic image has been enshrined in countless books and films, from the sentimental scholars' tales Goodbye Mr Chips and To Serve Them All My Days, to the lampooning of the St Trinian's comedies with their terrorising, hockey stick-wielding schoolgirls.
The idea of such a quintessentially British education would appear anathema to communist China. But such is the mainland's booming education market that Dulwich is setting up four international franchises in the country in the next few years: the first opens in Shanghai on August 26; a second will open in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, in 2005; a third is coming to Beijing within the next two years and a fourth will open at a venue yet to be decided, probably in southern China.
In the 17th century, Alleyn laid down rules on a uniform for the school's students - an upper coat of 'good cloth of sad colour' and black caps - and three days a week the scholars were to have 'beere without stint'. While beer will undoubtedly be off the menu at Dulwich College International School (DCIS) in Shanghai, students will have to wear a formal uniform of shirt, tie and jacket with grey trousers. It will be the first time blazers, cricket bats and the old school tie have been seen on the Bund since the second world war - remember the British schoolboy in J.G. Ballard's Empire Of The Sun?
'People have uniforms in most schools here; we're taking the next step by bringing in a jacket. The parents support it,' says Fritz Libby, one of the school's financial founders.
'The numbers [of interested parents] are looking extremely good. There is clearly a very good awareness of British education,' says Graham Able, headmaster of Dulwich College in London.