The Awkward Ambition of Elite British Private Schools Abroad
Institutions that once trained young men to run the British Empire are establishing franchises in countries with reputations for corruption and long colonial pasts.
On a Friday afternoon in late 2018, children gathered on an artificial-grass pitch in Kazakhstan’s former capital of Almaty. In the distance, beyond the hangarlike buildings of their school, the Trans-Ili Alatau Mountains were snow-capped. On the other side rose the glass-walled Ritz-Carlton hotel complex. Shakira’s Hips Don’t Lie blared from the PA.
The occasion was a soccer tournament like many the world over, but, Shakira notwithstanding, this one had a determinedly British bent. The competition was between houses—student groupings traditional in English private education. Pagodas by the pitch bore the signature colors of the Bartle Frere, Edmonstone, Kipling, and Attlee houses. The first two were named for 19th century administrators of British India. The third honored Rudyard Kipling, author of the imperialist panegyric The White Man’s Burden. The last was named for Clement Attlee, the prime minister who established Britain’s National Health Service. All four men attended the English private school Haileybury or its antecedents.