British Private Schools Chase New Money in New York and Singapore
The UK’s elite schools are setting up international branches with local backers. The money-spinning partnerships don’t always go to plan.
Students playing a game of rugby at Rugby School, in 1923.
Source: Topical Press Agency/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Rugby School is steeped in over 400 years of history. Its playing fields are where a pupil invented the game of rugby in 1823, exhibiting “a fine disregard” for the rules of football. Parents can buy into this prestige for roughly £59,000 per year, per child.
This autumn, one class of Rugbeians is beginning its studies over 3,000 miles from those famous Warwickshire fields. Rugby School Nigeria is welcoming its first sixth-form students to a sprawling new campus on reclaimed land along the Lagos coastline, with younger pupils to follow soon.