British school caters to children of Kazakh elite

By Olzhas Auyezov

ALMATY (Reuters) - Kazakh businessman Serzhan Zhumashov says some of his friends laughed when he came up with the idea of opening a British school in his home country five years ago.

Last week, some brought their children to the opening of Haileybury Almaty, the first British private school in Central Asia and a concrete sign of the economic prosperity brought to Kazakhstan by oil and gas.

About 300 students and their parents attended the opening ceremony at the school, a stylish glass-and-concrete building in a newly developed area of Kazakhstan's commercial hub Almaty.

"We decided to do it so our children could stay here and at the same time get the education that would allow them to enter any university," said Zhumashov, the chairman of construction firm Capital Partners.

Regular schools, offering tuition mostly in Kazakh or Russian, are free in Kazakhstan but many school buildings are in need of repair and a shortage of space means children have to study in three shifts in some areas.

The graduation certificate that students in the mainstream system receive is only recognized by local universities, so those wanting to study abroad have to arrange exams themselves.

Zhumashov and six other Kazakh businessmen, including Nurzhan Subkhanberdin, the chairman of Kazkommertsbank and Margulan Seisembayev, the key shareholder of Alliance Bank, spent about $100 million (56.5 million pounds) on the project.

Haileybury, a private British school founded in 1862 in Hertford Heath, 20 miles north of central London, was the most enthusiastic of the foreign private schools the group contacted for advice. Its best-known alumnus was Britain's post-war Labour prime minister, Clement Attlee.

It is among several British private schools opening affiliates abroad to generate new income, including top names such as Harrow, Repton and Shrewsbury.

Fiona Rogers, general secretary of the Council of British International Schools, said British education is popular internationally and there are roughly 2,000 schools abroad teaching parts of the English curriculum.

"U.K. independent schools that choose to tap into this market can find that opening a branch abroad provides an important source of income which, in turn, can help the parent school in the U.K. provide more bursaries and contribute more to their local community," she told Reuters.

She said her organization was receiving a growing number of enquiries from individuals, companies and governments outside Britain seeking British independent schools interested in opening an international branch.

Haileybury was already a favorite among wealthy Kazakhs who started sending their children to Western schools in the 1990s.

"Haileybury always had Kazakh children," said school governor Jean Scott. "One of the parents was Serzhan."

Zhumashov said he and his partners were not trying to make a profit and the school would charge fees that would only cover its costs.