Eton Out of His Hand: Will Vanbergen on an Education in Britishness

William Vanbergen is an Old Etonian. He claims to have sat next to Prince William in Latin. It’s for this kind of reason that Britain’s Daily Mail and The Telegraph have focused on Vanbergen’s China-based education business, BE Education. Oh, and because they claim that he teaches Chinese children Britishness – something that they decry the absence of among Britain’s youth. What the devil is Vanbergen up to over here? We wanted to get to the bottom of it and why anyone would abandon Beijing for Shanghai. He was kind enough to indulge us.

What makes you an authority on Britishness?
The Daily Mail! The Telegraph also branded me as “loved by Tiger Mums,” which is quite a scary thought.

How stiff is your upper lip?
At times, very. It needs to be to get over the all the interesting challenges that you encounter doing business in China!

How old are these students?
Our youngest students we are looking after are 2 years old the oldest are looking for post graduate places. Most are 7-17 years old.

Why is this knowledge worth the high fees parents are paying?
The knowledge we have about schools we offer to any parent for free, and produce annual schools guides which we give out through banks, hotels and bookshops. Most of our parents use the free service. Our premium service fees are high, but the level of service and record of success is second to none. For some parents we will have one of our staff sit next to them on the plane and go with them on all the school visits. Nearly all our premium customers come by word of mouth so the customers must think it’s great value. At the same time, if the choice is a mid-range BMW or getting the most suitable education for your child, I know which I’d choose.

Have you ever played rugby?
Yes, but only on the wing as I’m too uncoordinated to be able to pass properly. At school, coordinated people were allowed to play ball sports, those less able were sent to row boats like galley slaves. I was very much the latter.

What’s your favorite piece of rugby banter?
My favorite moment has to be the World Cup final in ’03. I was in a bar in Guangzhou filled with Australians.

Do you also try to instill a British accent?
No, but students studying in the UK from a young age (e.g. 12 or 13) pick it up.

What aspect of Britishness do Chinese kids struggle with the most?
The sense of humor can be pretty interesting. For older students, we recommend a diet of Blackadder, Fawlty Towers, Monty Python and James Bond.

Do you coach the students on British cuisine?
No, we do give them a warning, though! Being serious, the school food has improved dramatically in the last 10 years. When I was there, it was barely edible. When we started this business in ’03 and ’04, we tried to arrange appointments at school away from lunchtimes in case we were invited to eat, but since then it’s improved year on year, so that now it’s better than most hotels.

Do you coach the students on British etiquette?
We used to have a sheet on manners in the UK; students are much better mannered in China now than they were ten years ago. So mostly we don’t need to do anything on this front other than remind them to sit up straight in interviews. We help run summer courses at Eton and Charterhouse that do have a lesson in etiquette as part of the curriculum.

Do you coach the students on afternoon tea?
No, this was something the Daily Mail created. I did take some parents for afternoon tea in the Dorchester once but they didn’t seem to appreciate it half as much as the dim sum in the Royal China the nest day.

Where did you get the idea to do this?
When I was at university, one of my friends asked me to get a friend of his parents’ son into a good school. I did, and he offered to pay me saying that there was no one in China that had been able to help and all the agents were only able to offer third-rate places. When I declined, he said that actually the boy’s parents were paying him and it was only fair he gave me half as I did all the work. I said this was fine. When I found out how much, it took me less than a minute to decide to book a plane ticket and start a business in China. It has the added benefit of really strengthening ties between the countries as people who are educated in the UK, or anywhere else for that matter, are much likely to do business and look fondly on that country in later life.

What are the biggest misconceptions that Chinese kids have about the UK?
That everyone is like Mr. Darcy and Harry Potter! Actually, to be fair, quite a few of the schools are fairly similar to Hogwarts. Also they all believe that London is the “foggy city,” which I think implies that their textbooks haven’t been updated since the 1960s and the last of the pea soup fogs.

Do you make the students watch The Iron Lady or other extremely British films?
Not unless they’re helpful for their GCSE exams, or part of their one-to-one English curriculum.

What single British value do you believe is most important to teach?
That’s a tough question. Good manners are helpful wherever you go, but they are increasing here too, as is a sense of fair play, so I’ll have to go with trying your best at whatever you’re doing no matter what the odds. I think we do a pretty good job of that on the school sports pitches.

What are the students most excited about learning about British culture?
The positive media image of Britain as a land full of polite and charming ladies and gentleman with a sense of fair play. I think Harry Potter has done as much recently as Jane Austen.

Isn’t this the job of the British Council?
They mainly focus on their member universities. When I got our first student an offer from Eton, I asked him to go over to the British Council, which was across the hallway from our office in Guangzhou, to ask them if he could go to Eton as a bit of market research. He returned 15 minutes later, wondering if he really was going, as he was told there was no way on earth a student from China could get in. After Eton, he went to Imperial and then Cambridge.

Do the students in Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu and Shenzhen differ in how quickly they absorb Britishness?
Depends more on how young they go rather than where they come from. A student that goes for prep school can switch between the two cultures seamlessly, which is interesting to watch.

Tell us a few of your success stories.
We’ve got students in every top school and university in the UK. The highlights are students winning scholarships to Eton, Winchester and Wycombe Abbey. We’ve also got students in to Harvard and Yale in the US, which is great. But the things that stand out are seeing the kids develop. We had one girl who was academically brilliant but so shy when she started that she couldn’t look at you while talking; within two years, her confidence had grown so that she was able to argue her points in class at the top girls’ school in the country. That was fantastic. Also, I helped the son of one of the top property developers in China, who had just failed his GCSE’s. Again, he was quite bright, but had had his school changed by a Chinese agent every year so they could get the commission from each school every time they changed his school, which had essentially led him to give up. We got him back on track and helped him to see his potential. Eighteen months later, he got top grades on his A-levels and went to Warwick University.

Define Britishness in two words.
Fair Play!

In your opinion, who is an example of a model Briton?
Aside from Mr. Darcy and Colin Firth, probably the Duke of Wellington. He got sent to take charge of a small rabble of an army in Portugal, and in fairly short order turned them into a disciplined fighting unit that beat one of the greatest generals and armies of all time. Churchill’s absolute refusal to give up in the face of adversity was also outstanding.

Have you ever met the Queen?
No, but I sat next to William in Latin.

Do you know all three verses of the national anthem?
I wouldn’t bet my company on it solo, but I think I could sing along.

Are the students required to learn all three verses of the national anthem?
Definitely not. I’m pretty sure most British kids couldn’t.

Why the UK and not other nationalities?
We send students to the US and Switzerland too. We started with the UK as that was what we knew the most about in the beginning.

How much do you think parents would pay for programs teaching essential Americanness or Frenchness?
How to do business in America would go down much better. I have yet to hear of a Chinese person wanting their kid to be more French. The law of supply and demand might be fairly brutal on that course.

How much would you pay to learn essential Chineseness?
A lot. I’ve bought lots books on the subject and I read at a snail’s pace, so that’s a lot of time invested as well. I’d easily pay our most expensive fee for knowing ten years ago what I know now.

Are there some kids for whom Britishness is impossible to learn?
It gets harder to pick up the older you get.

Do parents ever sit in on these cultural tutoring sessions?
Our lessons focus much more on subject-specific knowledge (maths, physics, history etc.) and getting students used to the Western style of learning – inquiry and discussion vs. rote, as well as interview techniques and critical thinking. Outside of the Daily Mail pages, we really don’t teach how to make afternoon tea! Parents do wait outside but most drop their children off. With the premium services, we’re essentially holding the parents’ hands all the way through, so they learn everything we tell the kids while we’re travelling with them.

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Photo courtesy of William Vanbergen