Shanghai · History
How 23 students in Jinqiao became China's first British independent school
Dulwich College Shanghai Pudong opened in August 2003 with a handful of kindergarteners and a Tony Blair inauguration. More than two decades on, it enrols 1,600 students from over 40 nationalities.
The school that would become the template for British independent education across China began with a personal problem. In 2003, British lawyer Fraser White and his wife Karen Yung were living in Shanghai with three young children and could not find a school that met their expectations. Strong academics, a broad co-curricular programme, and the grounding of a venerable British tradition were, at that moment, simply unavailable in the city.
A chance meeting with Graham Able, then Master of Dulwich College in London, changed that. Able saw an opportunity. The London governors, chaired by Eddie George, the Governor of the Bank of England, backed it. The result was a 100-year global partnership between the founding school and White and Yung, as described on the Dulwich College International origins page: the arrangement that would make Dulwich College Shanghai Pudong the first British independent school to take its practices and ethos to China.
In 2002, White and Yung secured the World Charter with Dulwich College in London, setting the legal and institutional foundation for what came next. The following year, the college opened in the Jinqiao area of Pudong. On 22 July 2003, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Dr. Zhang En Di, Vice Mayor of the Shanghai Pudong New District, formally inaugurated the campus. The first Head of College was Colin Niven. The campus opened with just 26 kindergarten students.
Growth and Campus
The school expanded steadily through the mid-2000s. In 2007, the Junior School building opened at an official ceremony attended by HM Consul-General Shanghai, Carma Elliott OBE, and Vice Mayor Zhang En Di again. That same year, the first Dulwich Pudong students received their IGCSE results, a milestone that confirmed the school's academic arc. The Science Block, the most recent major facility addition, opened in 2018.
The Pudong campus remains on Lan An Road, Jinqiao, in the leafy expatriate district of Pudong New District. In 2016, the college opened a second Shanghai site, Dulwich College Shanghai Puxi, in the Minhang District on the western bank of the Huangpu, extending the family's reach across the city.
By its 20th anniversary in 2023, the college had grown from those 26 kindergarteners to over 1,600 students aged 2 to 18, drawn from more than 40 nationalities. Fourteen members of the founding staff were still on the payroll. The college marked the occasion with a Founder's Day gathering and a community message spelled out on the field large enough to be read from the air: DULWICH 20.
Curriculum and Identity
The school runs the English National Curriculum from Year 1 through Year 9, enhanced for its international student body, with Early Years Foundation Stage provision in the DUCKS section from Toddler to Year 2 and a dual-language approach in Mandarin and English from that earliest stage. Students move into IGCSE in Years 10 and 11, and the IB Diploma Programme in Years 12 and 13. The college is an authorised IB World School and certified examination centre for IB, ACT, PSAT and SAT. It is also a certified test centre for ABRSM music and LAMDA drama examinations, and an audition centre for Berklee College of Music.
The campus facilities were purpose-built to support this range: a 750-seat professional theatre, a black box studio, a recording studio, a 25-metre indoor swimming pool, science laboratories, design technology workshops, and art studios. The Deputy Master (External) of Dulwich College London inspects the campus annually to verify that standards align with the founding school.
Accreditation
The college holds accreditation from the Council of International Schools (CIS), which reaccredited it in June 2025, and from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC). In February 2025, it was admitted to the Heads' Conference (HMC), placing it alongside Eton College, Westminster School, Charterhouse and its sister school Dulwich College Singapore in a body founded in 1869 that currently counts over 360 member schools globally.
Results and Present Day
The college's IB results have become a reliable data point in the China international school market. The 2024 cohort posted an average score of 37.5 against the global IB average of 30.3, the highest result in China and the third consecutive year the college led the country's IB league table. In the 2023 cycle, all four Dulwich College International schools in China, including Pudong, ranked in the top five nationally. University destinations have included Cambridge, Oxford, Imperial College London, Brown, Columbia and MIT.
In 2024, Hillhouse Investment Group acquired the Dulwich College International schools in Asia from Education in Motion, the group that Karen Yung credited at the 20th anniversary with having grown from the Pudong seed into a network spanning 13 schools across five countries. The Pudong campus, now in its 23rd year, remains the oldest node of that network. Head of College at the 20th anniversary was Garry Russell, with Dr. Ella Yankelevich subsequently noted in current school communications. The college is set to co-host the 2027 Dulwich Olympiad alongside its Puxi sibling.