What LEH International School Foshan hopes to bring to the Greater Bay Area

Another day, another British international school comes to this part of the world. Lady Eleanor Holles School’s new outpost promises to be different, though. For starters, it is the first LEH school besides the original, which was founded in 1710, and rather than opening in Hong Kong, or even Shenzhen or Guangzhou, it is located in Foshan.

Many international schools with a prestigious name have few concrete links to the original. But as founding headmaster Steve Allen is at pains to point out, “We are not a school with the LEH name, we are a part of LEH.”

Ahead of its official opening in September, Douglas Parkes met Allen to discuss his long career and what LEH Foshan hopes to bring the Greater Bay Area’s crowded marketplace for international education.

Since this is the first overseas location for LEH, why Foshan rather than Hong Kong or Guangzhou? There are a number of reasons. Foshan is one of the historic centres of the Greater Bay Area. It’s actually older than Hong Kong in many respects. It’s that sense of tradition that sits well with LEH. There’s a lot of creativity there. It’s one of the homes of Cantonese cuisine, Cantonese opera and ceramic arts. It’s a home of Chinese martial arts – Ip Man, Bruce Lee’s teacher was born there. It’s a city that’s growing, with a population that wants more education. To get the size of campus that we’ve got – 58,000 square metres, which is nearly double the size of Harrow International School Hong Kong, to put it into context – that’s quite special.

Plus there was the question of where is there a need for another international school? There aren’t international schools of quality in that part of Guangdong and therefore it’s also about respecting the local audience. Why put a school in Hong Kong, where there are probably now more school places than there are children? That doesn’t respect the needs of those localities that really need an international school.