From a single Sanlitun campus to Beijing's longest-established British school

The British School of Beijing traces its roots to 2003, when it was established by the British Embassy as part of the King's Schools group. It was a founding member of the British Schools Foundation and set out to serve the growing community of foreign nationals in China's capital. The school was originally planned to open in September 2004 but launched early, on 29 March 2004, at its first site in Sanlitun, in the Chaoyang district.

Origins and Early Years

The Sanlitun campus catered to students from Early Years through to secondary age, drawing children of embassy staff and multinational executives. By 2011, the combined school had 1,150 students from 50 countries. British nationals made up around 25 percent of the roll; mainland Europeans together accounted for another 30 percent, with North Americans forming the third-largest group.

Demand from expatriate families settled in Shunyi, the district northeast of the city centre that had become Beijing's primary expat residential zone, drove the next step. The British School of Beijing's Shunyi campus opened in 2009, becoming the BSB family's second setting. For the first four years, Sanlitun and Shunyi were run as a single institution. In 2013 they were administratively made into separate schools, each with its own identity and leadership.

Nord Anglia and Expansion

The school was one of several British-branded international schools in China that transitioned to Nord Anglia Education, the premium group that now operates more than 80 schools in over 30 countries. Under Nord Anglia, BSB Shunyi grew to its current capacity of 1,500 students, drawn from over 60 nationalities including British, German, American, South Korean and Hong Kong families.

The Shunyi campus is located at South Side, No. 9 An Hua Street, in the Tianzhu Development Zone. It runs from Early Years Foundation Stage through to Year 13, taking pupils from 18 months to 18 years, and is registered with the Beijing Municipal Education Commission as an international department school, which restricts enrolment to foreign passport holders.

Curriculum and Accreditation

Students follow the English National Curriculum from EYFS through Key Stage 4, sitting IGCSE examinations at 16. Post-16 provision now includes both the IB Diploma Programme and, more recently, A-Level pathways, giving students at the top of the school additional flexibility in shaping their university applications. The school was authorised as an IB World School in May 2014, according to the IB's own registry.

A German Primary Programme runs alongside the main curriculum for native German-speaking students, reflecting the significant German-speaking community among Beijing's expatriate population. The programme follows the Thuringia Curriculum and the Kernlehrplan for Years 1 to 4, integrating with non-German-language subjects across the school.

On accreditation, BSB Shunyi holds British Schools Overseas status, inspected by the Independent Schools Inspectorate, an organisation approved by the UK's Department for Education. It is also accredited by the Council of British International Schools (COBIS), with its most recent COBIS inspection carried out in 2025. The school is a member of IAPS, the Independent Association of Prep Schools, and of ACAMIS, the Association of China and Mongolia International Schools. It operates as an approved Cambridge International Examinations testing centre and an Edexcel testing centre.

Academic results at post-16 have been a consistent selling point. BSB Shunyi's average IB Diploma score of 37 sits well above the global average of 33. In the 2021 and 2022 examination sessions, two students in each year achieved a perfect score of 45 points. Graduates have gone on to Cambridge, Imperial College London, UCL, UC Berkeley, NYU, the University of Toronto and Seoul National University, among others.

Facilities and Global Partnerships

The Shunyi campus is a single combined site for EYFS, Primary and Secondary, with facilities that include an air-purified sports dome, tennis and basketball courts, playing fields, science laboratories and a 300-seat theatre. As part of the Nord Anglia network, the school runs curriculum collaborations with The Juilliard School for music, MIT for STEAM project work, and UNICEF for global citizenship programmes.

Present Day

Bevan, who previously served as Head of Secondary and Vice Principal at BSB Shunyi from 2021, was appointed Principal of the school with effect from August 2025. He joined from a Nord Anglia role in Shanghai and has been a member of the Asia Pacific IB Educator network since 2015. The school, as Wikipedia's entry on the British School of Beijing notes, holds a maximum capacity of 1,500 students and draws from over 60 nationalities, a figure consistent with what the school itself reports. More than two decades on from that March 2004 opening, BSB Shunyi stands as the longest-established British international school in the Chinese capital.

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