BOTH SCHOOLS HAVE long and distinguished histories. Dulwich College was founded in London by the Shakespearean actor Edward Alleyn in 1619. Suzhou High School dates back 900 years and is the top elite school in China's Jiangsu province. But the new school they are now together forging in Suzhou is far from traditional.
The British and Chinese schools are planning a 3,000-student boarding school complex on the vast, hi-tech Suzhou Industrial Estate, 100 miles from Shanghai.
Its centrepiece will be a joint secondary school that is being built by Suzhou Education Bureau, where Suzhou and Dulwich students aged 16 to 18 will be taught separately in adjoining suites of classrooms. A new Suzhou Middle School will stand at one end of the site and a Dulwich International School for children aged three to 16 at the other. Each will take 1,000 students.
Suzhou is the third Dulwich franchise school being set up in China - part of a wider expansion of international education fanning out from Shanghai. But Dulwich Suzhou is set to go further than other international schools in bridging the gulf that divides them from schools serving mainland children.
Brian McDouall, former vice-principal of King George V School in Kowloon, who is in charge of the Dulwich side of the Suzhou project, said: 'It is the first time an established school from overseas has linked up with an established school from China in a joint venture.'
After the revolution in 1949, the communists banned foreign missionary schools in China and its children have been forbidden from studying alongside westerners in foreign-run schools ever since. Today, the ban covers pupils aged five to 16. To attend an international school, Chinese children must have at least one parent who is a foreign passport holder or a resident of Hong Kong, Macau or Taiwan.