EDDi XXVIII
December 2020
Dear subscribers, readers and newcomers
This week’s EDDi is a hybrid.
The lead piece is an insightful interview with a very interesting lady, Ruth Benny, Head Girl’ and founder of Top Schools. For those of you involved with international schooling in Hong Kong, or in Asia in general, it makes for valuable reading, covering the impact of Covid-19, the recent protests, the implications for school enrolment, and teacher recruitment.
And, for those who like to get their teeth in something more challenging, we have a particularly special EDDi digest:
We’ve included this digest on its own because it warrants the breathing space. It’s an important piece, summarising an impactful paper. We suggest you find yourself a quiet 15 minutes, grab a drink of tea/coffee/something stronger and take the time to read, reflect and digest.
And finally, while we can’t promise this is the last you’ll hear from us about International Schooling: The Teacher’s Guide, this week is the last of our summaries of the book’s key sections.
Our digest covers the final five chapters, revealing what you’ll experience (or might have already experienced) on your international journey – the good, the bad, and the occasionally ugly.
Happy reading
EDDi
Interview by Dr Stephen Whitehead
How does a 20-something British woman, “drop-out and backpacker”, end up heading one of the most successful international school consultancies in South East Asia?
Not without lots of determination, flexibility and a huge dollop of independent mindedness.
Meet Ruth Benny, ‘Head Girl’ (aka founder and CEO) at Top Schools: admission experts for parents wishing to send their children to a Hong Kong international or private school and the “only in-depth expert source of information on schools in Hong Kong’.
Ruth’s backpacking urge took her to most points on the compass before she eventually landed in Hong Kong in 1995, whereupon like many young Western backpackers, she got herself a job teaching English “because that was the only thing I was qualified to do…but I thought well if I’m going to do it properly then I’ll need a degree so I went to university’’. A few years later and Ruth not only has her degrees, including an MA, but is firmly rooted in this amazing city. So no more backpacking. After trying her hand at teaching adults (“I quickly discovered I don’t like teaching children!”) Ruth joined HSBC Hong Kong as a corporate trainer. Eight years on and she’s working with Hong Kong Polytechnic delivering “huge contracts for the Hong Kong Education Department” providing teacher training for Hong Kong local schools, a job she did on and off for 16 years.
Whether Ruth realises it or not, all this is preparing her for the upcoming big move in her life which is forming Top Schools, but first she needs some additional motivation – which arrives in the form of two young children.
“My partner and I wanted our two children to read, write and be proficient in Chinese, not be like many of us Westerners which is to assume because we are Western and speak English as a first language, there is no need to learn a second one. So we put our children into bilingual schools but I had to figure all this out, there was no one to help me. There was no published information. So I started a website to document what I had learned. I reckoned I had a good perspective having been involved in education and living in Hong Kong for so long. Very quickly parents called me up and asked if I would help them to place their children into a school. And thereafter I faked it until I made it!”
And make it Ruth did. May 2012 and Top Schools gets formed. Eight years later and it is the go-to Hong Kong consultancy for any parent seeking to know more about Hong Kong schools and find a “best fit school placement” for their child. As a mum herself, seeking a good school for her children, she spotted a gap in the Hong Kong school market and set about filling it. Since then, Top Schools has expanded its core Hong Kong education information service for parents, to now include “helping schools find best fit students and best fit staff, and assisting companies with their employee relocations”.
Ruth may now wear a number of hats, but what she is not is an ‘expat mum’:
“I have a problem with the word expat. What I was always aiming for with myself and my family was assimilation into Hong Kong life and culture.”
Despite being a entrepreneur and businesswoman, Ruth also has a ‘problem with corporate life’. “I think I was a really bad employee. I basically got sacked from HSBC. That sort of corporate bureaucracy doesn’t fit will with one of my core values which is freedom”. Which gives a clue as to why Ruth eschews the title CEO for ‘Head Girl’. Here is a woman who fully embraces business culture but only on her terms.
“I was recently put forward for an award and the organisation asked me for my CV and I thought I don’t have one! I really hope I never have to go and work for somebody else. That is just not me.”
Nowadays schools around the world, and in Hong Kong, are much more orientated to developing the skills and aptitudes required for an entrepreneurial work life. But that wasn’t the case in Ruth’s upbringing.
“I was very much conditioned to believe that I would have 2.4 children and if I was lucky enough to have a career as a woman it would just be a good job somewhere, with a decent salary. That was my upbringing.”
Ruth may not have realised it when she first arrived in Hong Kong a quarter of a century ago, but she and it were made for each other.
“If you’ve got a free spirit and if you are trying to make things happen, people in Hong Kong are much more willing to give you a chance than I found people were in the UK…Though I recognise that being a white [Western] woman in Asia is a great privilege and that has helped open doors for me here. Though frankly I’m not a natural business person – accounts, budgets and planning or not my natural happy place.”
The portrait that emerges is of an accomplished and reflective professional, a woman with a clear streak of independence. At the same time, the more traditional feminine side of Ruth’s character is never far from the surface.
“Yes, Top Schools is a business, of course, but what we do is extremely emotional. We call our parents clients, but really we have a very close emotional relationship with them. We have to use a lot of empathy to do what we do well.”
I was then prompted to ask Ruth whether she thought a man could do her job?
“Sure… (pause)… I haven’t found one yet!”
Hong Kong International Schools – caught in a whirlwind
Having spent most of her adult life in Hong Kong, which includes raising a family and developing an educational consultancy, there is not much Ruth doesn’t know about Hong Kong education. And with Hong Kong currently experiencing more upheaval than it has been for many decades, Ruth is as good a person as any to provide insights into how the ex-British colony is changing. And one area it is most definitely changing is in terms of its education market.
“About five years ago the mainland (China) market mushroomed to about 60% of our clientele. That has dropped off dramatically this year. At one time I had three consultants who were dealing exclusively with the Hong Kong mainland families. Now, the majority of our clientele are local Hong Kong families, followed by international families, with only 10% mainland families.”
The Hong Kong (education) market is changing that fast now that I really don’t know what we’ll be doing a few years down the line. We’re constantly having to pivot (I hate that word!), having to adapt, be reactive, flexible. I’m seeing that the family, consultancy side of things is on a downward trend. But if you only look at the Hong Kong international school market then that’s only part of the picture.”
If the Hong Kong mainland international school market is in decline, then what does its future look like?
“That (local market) is only going to increase and increase but the Hong Kong schools which cater for this increase will not be international, they will be private schools.”
So what is the difference between a privately owned (or corporate) Hong Kong international school and a private Hong Kong school?
“The difference between private and international schools in Hong Kong is subtle but important. A Hong Kong international school is obligated by the Education Bureau to admit a minimum percentage of international children. That percentage is currently between 50% and 98%, with 70% being typical. We know that a large proportion of those so-called ‘international children’ are in fact local children who have international passports. Okay, that works, it ticks the box, everybody’s happy. But the newer schools are private and they have zero obligation to admit international students. They can admit whoever they like.”
There is already a divergence between local private and international schools in Hong Kong, and Ruth predicts that gap will grow.
“This disparity will become acute. We’ll see local private schools full to brim with local children and the international schools – of which there will fewer – catering to a fast diminishing international market. The EDB will be flexible with the cap on local students but this may not be enough. Some of the big name Hong Kong international schools are now finding it tough to even reach a level of 50% international students. And remember that this 50% international is not really international. They are only international on paper.”
So how would you define a private school as opposed to an international school?
“The only key difference is that the local private schools do not have diversity. They do not need to have diversity therefore they will not have diversity. ‘Private’ is the umbrella term and under this heading you have ‘international schools’.”
Basically, there is a lot less diversity in Hong Kong international schools than would appear, simply because even the so-called ‘international students’ are in fact local students with international passports.”
So you are predicting this lack of diversity will only become more acute over the coming years?
“Correct”
If the school is designated as ‘private’ what curricula are they using?
Any type. It is up to them. We’ve got some doing the British curriculum, American curriculum, International Primary curriculum, and so on. They are all doing a non-local curriculum. You can consider that they are international in their curriculum and in their faculty, but not in their student cohort.”
Massive decline in the mainland student numbers, political turmoil, the enacting or imposition of the Chinese Security Law, record numbers of Hong Kongers seeking the British National Overseas Passport, and Covid-19. I pointed out to Ruth that this is one toxic mix to have to deal with if you own or run an international school in Hong Kong.
“Yes, but international schools in Hong Kong will not fail. The government will not see schools fail. Especially schools where the government has given them the land and all of that. All that will happen is that the terms and conditions will be ‘adapted’ shall we say, to the point that you won’t see this stark differentiation between international schools and private schools. Because the demand is incessant. There is huge demand from local families and mainland families in Hong Kong, for a non-local curriculum, English-immersion education.
The actual threat to international schools is mostly a technical one, and the government and schools can work that out, making the obligations less onerous.”
But what might come with the Hong Kong government loosening up the rules on international student recruitment?
“Well, clearly a danger is that the (Chinese) government ensures these international schools don’t fail but in turn starts exerting more control over them and thereby they lose autonomy.”
All this suggests that international schools in Hong Kong can survive but not in the way they’ve been used to?
“Sure, but an additional problem is that there has been uncontrolled growth in international schools in Hong Kong over the past decade. There have been 12 new international schools in the past 12 years and more and more are coming. The reason that some of these international schools are in trouble is because they were ill-conceived from the get-go. They got caught up in the whirlwind of IS expansion but the demand from international students/families was never as strong as they made out. The demand for school places was not coming from the expats, it was always coming from the local and mainland Hong Kong families. Add in the fact that most of these big-name international schools are extremely expensive and that is why there are problems today. It is too easy to blame Covid-19 - these core problems were always going to surface eventually. These schools will be blaming Covid for evermore so no one has egg on their face.”
So there were some bad business decisions early on in the Hong Kong IS growth market which have now surfaced, partly because of Covid-19, but mostly because there was always an underpinning flaw in the business model for some of these big international schools?
“Exactly, that’s correct.”
Teacher Recruitment, business expansion and adaptation
Covid-19 appears to have dealt a massive blow to international schoolteacher recruitment around the world, so what is the impact on Hong Kong schools?
Well, we have a number of schools who had contracted to hire teachers and were due to start this month (September) but now the teachers cannot get here. Visas are being held up – apparently a number of schools have finished their recruitment cycle for next year but whether or not all those visas will be processed and the teachers can get here remains to be seen. Then there are a lot of teachers who are really unsure whether or not to move. So it’s all a bit strange this year to be honest.”
Strange times or not, Top Schools continues to expand its teacher recruitment side of the business, but notably by finding teachers for schools in the ‘Greater Bay’ area of China (Guangzhou, Shenzen, Foshan, etc) – where there remains massive growth and more stability than in many other parts of South East Asia, including Hong Kong.
Given the uncertainty surrounding Hong Kong in all respects, not just international schooling, it comes as little surprise that Ruth has taken the decision to open a second Top Schools office in the West – in London.
“This is something I’d been thinking about for a number of years. People were always asking me do we advise on UK schools? It is a very common trend in Hong Kong for students to stay in Hong Kong for primary and then to migrate over to a UK boarding school at some point, usually for secondary. The BNO thing set me off on another round of thinking about a London move. Top Schools received a lot of enquiries when it become clear that Hong Konger’s with a BNO passport could settle in the UK. The London office will open in a couple of weeks.”
That need to ‘pivot, adapt, be flexible’ comes across strongly in Ruth’s business narrative. Indeed, if any business leader lacks that ability to turn adversity into opportunity then this current period of global uncertainty and deferred globalisation will likely end up crippling their business. Five-year business plans are all very well, but just make sure you write in the necessary provisos.
Which causes me to ask Ruth how she thinks international schools in Hong Kong have reacted and adapted to the challenges of the past few months:
“(Laughter) Well online learning was a bit of a fiasco wasn’t it!... It’s hard, because all the schools are putting on a brave face and slapping themselves on the back saying what a great job they all did with online learning, but the reality is every individual family will have its own story to tell about that! Schools are now in student recruitment mode for next year and many are not doing well. Schools that have historically never struggled to fill places currently have space availability, something we’ve never seen in the past decade. Of course, because the schools have more places then the parents feel more optimistic. For the most part, schools have not increased their fees. So we’ve seen a fee freeze. But nor will they increase their teacher’s salaries this year. That will be quite controversial.”
All this suggests that education as a business will become more explicit through Covid and the underlying uncertainty in Hong Kong.
“Yes, the corporatisation of international education, the business of schools is ramping up. At Top Schools we do talk to the schools about the business of running a school. Teachers get promoted up the management ladder but by the time they are running a large organisation like a school the education side of their job is pretty small actually. They are running a business. And this is especially the case when you are talking about the large groups of schools..”
The Changing Hong Kong School Market
Hong Kong is one of those places on the planet which has many eyes on it right now, and not just in Asia. For decades it has been a busting, prosperous outpost of Western capitalism and Western values, all threaded into an intriguing if not unattractive web of authentic Orientalism. The result was a unique ‘city state’, a heady place of extreme wealth and dynamic opportunity which attracted adventurers from around the world. Ruth was, and still is, one of those adventurers Hong Kong attracted from the West.
But what happens next?
“A lot of people left Hong Kong this year, mainlanders and Westerners, but I cannot say if the numbers were greater than usual because I haven’t got the exact figures from the schools. One interesting shift is that a lot of families dropped out of the schools but they are still in Hong Kong. The home-schooling population has grown, mostly pre-schoolers and lower primary age children. We have to see if this is a blip or a long-term shift towards home-schooling.
Hong Kong has a growing number of middle-income foreigners, from north America, Europe, India. Such families are not on big money relocation packages. They have no support for schooling and they struggle to pay these school fees. These are the families who are withdrawing their children from the international schools, and we predict there will be more withdrawals in the new year. We already know of many expat families planning to return home in January.”
Hong Kong is not one settled environment. It has been experiencing profound change for decades and that continues. In other words, there has been no one Hong Kong since 1945. It has become a chimera but one which points now in a very different direction to its past.
My own relationship to that city is as a Westerner, engaging mostly with other Westerners, largely in education. But the Hong Kong I know and became familiar with over the past two decades is, I sense, disappearing.
But what is the ‘new’ Hong Kong?
“Well, it depends how deep you want to go, but it’s not good, is it? It’s not good at all. I’ve been here for 25 years but I don’t think I’ll be here in five years, to be honest. This is also my personal drift. My second child will go to school in the UK next year, I’ve opened an office in London. But I’m not the only one thinking of leaving. Hong Kong is changing.”
So how is it changing?
“A parent asked me the other day if other parents are fearful. That is a very strong word to use but I would say that parents are now waiting to see if they might be fearful.”
But when I pressed Ruth to describe how Hong Kong is changing, and what expat (Western) parents might be fearful of, she found it difficult to put into words.
To be sure, there is the new Hong Kong Security Law, making it easier for the Chinese government to crack-down on protesters and reduce the city’s autonomy, while many educationalists see a ‘chilling effect’ from China’s increased interference in research. All of which leads many to predicted the ‘end of Hong Kong’. But is it all doom and gloom?
I am not so sure.
Reflecting with Ruth on the future of Hong Kong
The week of my interview with Ruth, this news came out of China:
Chinese billionaires rebuild wealth to US$1.68 trillion, the size of Russia's economy
This year alone (2020), a year of dramatic economic decline around the world, China managed to mint 36 new billionaires. China’s wealthiest grew their fortunes by nearly US$500 billion during the year of Covid. That alone is a greater sum that Hong Kong’s total GDP of US366 billion.
Or to put it another way, in 1993, just before Hong Kong’s hand-back to China, the Hong Kong economy was 25% that of mainland China. Today, it is less than 3%.
If you look at the Pearl River Delta region of China then this compact region has a GDP equivalent to that of South Korea. And it is still growing.
In August 2020, Global Credit Rating Agency, Moody’s projected 4.6% contraction for G-20 economies in 2021, with the exception of China which is expected to record 1.9% growth in 2020, despite the pandemic. Indeed, in the third quarter, China’s economy grew by 4.9% year-on-year, confirming its status as the only major economy to expand this year.
Would you bet against China, against Hong Kong?
Many professionals currently living in declining, increasingly pinched economic circumstances in their home country, likely a country riven with covid, will rightly see in Hong Kong what Ruth saw in Hong Kong a quarter of a century ago – opportunity.
Sure, the Hong Kong lifestyle will be somewhat different under China rule than it was in the days of British rule, but that won’t deter young and ambitious global professionals from streaming out to Hong Kong, and China, in search of a better life.
And what about the China security issue? Well an international school teacher recently remarked to me that “it takes a special moral compass to work in Chinese education”.
I think it takes a special moral compass to work in education anywhere, not just in China.
Indeed, in some countries, many of which are highly popular with international school teachers, one’s moral compass is going to take a battering. Similarly, don’t go to live in Hong Kong or China if you desire a relaxed lifestyle. As a young Hong Kong billionaire once advised me, “no one comes to live in Hong Kong for the lifestyle, only for the money.”
And that money attraction is not lessening, if anything it is growing, especially given the stark and rapid economic decline most countries are currently experiencing.
On current predictions and projections, Hong Kong is about to get even richer under China rule than it ever was under British rule.
And on that basis alone, Hong Kong, indeed the whole Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay area of some 70 million people is going to become an increasingly attractive honey pot for ambitious, educated, skilled, global professionals of whatever nationality. Men and women just like Ruth.
Those Brits who secretly hold a nostalgia for days the days of empire, those Americans who recognise but fear an emergent hegemonic China, and all those who simply feel unsettled by these changes because they have a different view of freedom and individuality, they may well leave Hong Kong. But frankly, will Hong Kong or China care?
I doubt it, not when there are so many people of other nationalities just waiting for the chance to change their lives for the better. They’ll be all too willing to adapt to the ‘new Hong Kong’, even if it means living with the ‘chilling effect’ of the Hong Kong security law.
And as for international school teachers, most are already well versed in having to monitor what they say and do in and out of the classroom, paying respect to the local cultures and socio-political realities. As my co-author Denry Machin and I state in our new book:
“If you embark on an international school teaching career then expect change, expect uncertainty, expect black swans. Especially internationally.”
That said, if like Ruth you’ve lived in a place for many years, gotten used to a particular culture, then it can be a challenge having to confront a very different political scenario.
“I’m not the only one considering leaving Hong Kong. Hong Kong is changing. It has changed. When we came here it was a British colony then it quickly wasn’t a British colony…all I can say is we are in a state of extreme flux so its really hard to predict what will be the new Hong Kong.
In schools we’ve already seen quite a number of changes as a result of the national security law…nobody’s sure what is going to happen.”
If I had lived my last 25 years in Hong Kong, I think I would feel exactly the same as Ruth and the many other Westerners who ae looking to leave.
But I’m an outsider and my perspective is that Hong Kong was originally Chinese, then under British rule it became an outpost of Westernism. Globalisation arrived and Hong Kong became a primary beneficiary of neo-liberalist capitalist market forces, if not one of the global models for this type of economy which itself is a form of Westernisation.
But we now have a very different scenario. Hong Kong is going to be forced, kicking and screaming perhaps, to become much more closely associated with mainland China. In effect, Hong Kong is going back to its original roots, its original heritage. That this will upset a great many in Hong Kong, and a great many Hong Kong expats, of that there is no doubt. But there will be millions of people around the world not troubled by the Hong Kong security law for the simple reason that what they experience in their home country is no better and often worse. What they really yearn for is the opportunity to make a lot of money if they work hard. And Hong Kong, indeed the whole Pearl River Delta region, offers that.
China is not imposing communism on Hong Kong, but it is imposing its will via government diktat. What it is not doing is turning away from economic growth. China is now very firmly in the business of making money. Any young global ambitious professional able to align themselves with that opportunity is likely to do very well indeed.
But whatever happens next, whether Westerners in Hong Kong get replaced by workers and professionals from India, Eastern Europe, South America and so on, I put it to Ruth that these workers and their children will still be seeking an educational experience that is not rooted in the Chinese mainland curriculum.
“Yes, that is very true, but probably at a much lower price point to that which the Hong Kong international schools are currently operating at. What we are seeing already is that Indian families for example, who cannot afford the pricey international schools, are sending their children into the Hong Kong (school) system…they have no choice.
“I’ve seen our discussions [at Top Schools] blow up talking about English medium schools - local government subsidised schools operating only in English, and there is a misperception that such schools exist. They do not exist. There are about half-a-dozen such schools that try to minimise the Chinese to the point that the children are not learning any sort of useful Chinese language, those schools then become homogenous in that they only cater for ‘ethnic minority students’.
“It will be interesting to see how the Hong Kong government can cater for the surge in demand from non-Chinese families for an English-based education.”
There is definitely a decline in the standard expat identity in Hong Kong, and that decline has, as Ruth acknowledged, “been going on for many years.” In which case there is every reason to expect the decline to continue if not accelerate.
But the gap created by the exit of ‘standard expats’ will be filled somehow, from somewhere. Because there is money to be made, jobs to be had. There is still opportunity in Hong Kong.
In other words, the Hong Kong dream is not finished. It is merely reframing itself. Something it has done for several centuries.
The ‘new Hong Kong’ will still be diverse but it will be a different type of diversity, very likely no longer white, Western dominated, but perhaps more a truly Asian mixture of identities. It will be racially diverse in a way it wasn’t a quarter of a century ago when Ruth first arrived.
But as Ruth points out, British education continues to be the dominant cultural education system, globally, and the desire of parents around the world, of whatever nationality, to have that education is still going to be strong.
“British education will still be a big sell in Hong Kong. The British education commodity is very successful, families from around the world send their children to British boarding schools. These families and many like them still perceive British education to be the Gold Standard. Even though some British schools are offering the IB curriculum, the brand they are selling is Britishness…But the top tier international schools in Hong Kong which have high fees, they are pricing themselves out of this new market for education.”
I came away from the interview feeling that if Ruth departs Hong Kong for London, then it will be Hong Kong’s loss and the UK’s gain. But at the same time I’m under no illusions that right now there will be another ‘Ruth’ somewhere around the world, maybe not Western, who is itching to take her place in that remarkable, and durable, Asian metropolis.
Interview by Dr Stephen Whitehead
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