On the outskirts of Chandigarh city in India's north-western Punjab state, a 473-year-old legacy British public school opened its first all-girls international campus earlier this year. In contrast to the prominent Gothic-style central building on the school grounds in Bedfordshire, England, the Indian premises are more modern, with purpose-built academic blocks. But a conspicuous red-brick clock tower bears the imprint of the school's British heritage.
The Bedford School, Mohali, is the newest in at least half a dozen British public schools (elite, fee-paying private schools with a long history), including three of the country's oldest, that have set up shop across the length and breadth of India. Their expansion comes amid tighter market conditions in China and the introduction of VAT on private school fees in Britain from 1 January 2025. Since 2023, Bengaluru - India's Silicon Valley and a hub of software and start-up companies - has been home to the prestigious Harrow School, alma mater of India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.
Shrewsbury School has a campus in Bhopal in central India, while Wellington College has chosen to set up base in Pune, a western city that calls itself the "Oxford of the East" for its well-regarded universities and colleges. Millfield, Queen Elizabeth's School and a few others are reportedly on their way with satellite campuses in the coming years. For decades, India has been home to well-established local boarding schools modelled on the colonial British public-school system, serving elite, aristocratic families.
But this market has rapidly expanded with newly wealthy Indian families increasingly aspiring to give their children more global exposure. "Our international curriculum is quite a driver for many of them," Caroline Pascoe, head of school at Harrow in Bengaluru, told the BBC. Harrow and Bedford are among the few schools in India that follow an all-through Cambridge curriculum - a global education framework recognised at 10,000 schools worldwide - from primary through to A-levels.
Harsimran Singh Kocchar, whose own extended family runs a chain of schools across India, says he decided to send his five-year old daughter Parineet to Bedford Mohali because of the "holistic focus of the school on character development, confidence and not merely academics". He said he was also drawn to the fact the school did not have a "VIP culture" unlike many Indian equivalents. "All kids are treated the same.
Children of ministers and bureaucrats don't get greater privileges," said Singh. Beyond the growing ranks of well-heeled local families, non-resident Indians who have either returned home after long stints abroad, or those still in the UK or Middle East wanting their children to connect to their roots, are also a significant market for these schools, says Pascoe. Sixty per cent of Harrow's staff in Bengaluru are international and, like the others, it has imported its unique traditions to its Bengaluru campus: teachers are called Beaks, and students wear the traditional Harrow hats and uniform and take part in The Long Ducker - a cross-country race that happens across its schools globally.
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