The Merits of and Differences Between UK Boarding Schools and Schools in Singapore

Diana Stewart-Brown, head of Keystone’s Singapore office, considers why overseas parents are attracted to UK independent schools.

A few parents have recently questioned the merits of UK boarding schools in comparison to international and local schools in Singapore. Why, they ask, is British education seen as the ‘gold-standard’ across the world, especially while Singapore tops the global education rankings. Will my child really gain more from a boarding school education than their current school which achieves similar academic results? Despite the considerable expense and the long-distance separation, many parents send their children to UK schools each year and the overwhelming majority are extremely happy with the outcome of their child’s education in UK. Several factors have given rise to the UK’s leading reputation and academic results are just the beginning. 

UK schools are distinctive in the strength of their commitment to extracurricular excellence and pastoral care. We regularly hear it is this “holistic” approach which is so appreciated by families applying from overseas, and so hard to find elsewhere. Benenden’s headmistress writes in The Spectator that they offer girls ‘a complete education’, by which she means something more than exam results. She writes of an ‘inner curriculum’ where “academic, co-curricular and pastoral support work in tandem to identify and grow talent, build confidence and resilience together with self-knowledge”.

This philosophy is echoed by top schools all around the UK and especially by boarding schools which are responsible for every aspect of each student’s education during term time. Students are given the opportunity to develop a wide range of interests and strengths and we frequently hear praise for boarding school students who shine at interviews and tackle the ‘real world’ with confidence, common sense and the ability to work in a team. Solely academic teaching, bound by the occasionally rigid parameters of national curricula, does not necessarily give rise to these qualities which many employers consider equally, if not more, important than academic results.

A concern that is sometimes raised by parents in Singapore is that their child lacks ‘soft-skills’. It is hard to match the plethora of extracurricular activities, like debating, public speaking, the Duke of Edinburgh award, CCF and team sports, which you find within UK boarding schools, and these are designed to go beyond academics and underpin ‘softer skills’.. Additionally, success outside the classroom frequently translates to success within the classroom.

Whilst Singapore’s government encourages her schools to be more holistic (see this BBC article and this FT article), newspapers like The Strait Times still write about the highly-pressurised local schools and we sometimes hear comparable reports from parents who have begun to research other options. And we don’t just hear this in Singapore: The Financial Times writes that some Chinese and Russian parents have begun to shy away from “the rote learning and tough academic teaching in their own countries” and UK schools are now recruiting a record number of foreign pupils every year.

We have compiled the top UK boarding schools’ results alongside those of the most popular international schools and top local schools in Singapore. Please note that the UK schools we have listed are highly selective and it is not possible to make a precise comparison between different examinations (e.g. A Level vs IB). As such these results should not be viewed in comparison between the different groups of schools but provide an indication of the academic level of the top schools within each grouping.

*3 H2 distinctions is equivalent to A/A* grades.