Britannica International School Shanghai: British-owned since 2013

Britannica International School Shanghai opened in September 2013 on Gubei Road in Puxi, a central location close to Xujiahui CBD. It was established by Orbital Education, a Manchester-based group founded in 2008 by Kevin McNeany. McNeany is the serial education entrepreneur who had previously founded Nord Anglia Education in 1972 and led it to a London Stock Exchange IPO in 1997 before stepping down in 2005.

The school's legal entity was registered in September 2012, and teaching began a year later. Alun Thomas served as founding principal. The campus at 1988 Gubei Road, near Wuzhong Road, placed the school within a ten-minute drive of Xujiahui and fifteen minutes from the former French Concession, giving it one of the most central footprints among international schools in the city.

Curriculum and Identity

Britannica delivers the English National Curriculum from the Early Years Foundation Stage through to IGCSE and A Level, catering for students aged two to eighteen. It operates as a Cambridge International Examinations centre and uses Edexcel alongside Cambridge qualifications at IGCSE. The school carries a stated maximum capacity of 750 to 800 pupils; current roll stands at 410.

Orbital and Britannica's central claim in the Shanghai market is straightforward: as noted by the Orbital Education group, it is "the only school in the city to be British owned, with fully-trained teachers from the British Isles." Every teacher is a native English speaker, recruited and trained in the UK. The school also runs a compulsory Mandarin programme of five lessons a week for all students up to Year 9, with additional sessions for native Mandarin speakers, reflecting the Shanghai context.

Students draw from more than 40 nationalities. Alongside Mandarin, a World Languages Programme covers Korean, Japanese, French, Spanish, Italian and Hebrew, all delivered by specialist native-speaking teachers.

Accreditation

Britannica holds dual accreditation from COBIS (the Council of British International Schools) and CIS (the Council of International Schools). In December 2020 it announced it had become, according to its own records, the only international school in Shanghai to have gained full accreditation status from both bodies simultaneously. It is also inspected under the British Schools Overseas scheme by the Independent Schools Inspectorate; the most recent ISI inspection visit took place on 25 February 2025. The school is additionally a member of ACAMIS, the Association of China and Mongolia International Schools.

The school's first ASA-affiliated swim school status, recognised by the Amateur Swimming Association, gave it another distinction in the Shanghai international school market.

Campus and Recent Development

The Gubei campus is described as fully equipped with science laboratories, sports facilities and expressive arts spaces. In a recent summer break, the school undertook a multi-million RMB upgrade that included the addition of a dedicated STEM Centre for science, technology, engineering and mathematics. In 2025, Britannica was shortlisted for a TES Award for International Schools in the Best Curriculum Initiative category.

Present Day

Paul Farrell is the current principal. A Glasgow-born physicist and mathematician who trained at the University of Strathclyde, Farrell moved into international education after several years of classroom teaching in Scotland, with subsequent leadership roles in Romania, Dubai and London before arriving in Shanghai. Current enrolment stands at 410 pupils. Orbital Education's wider network now spans schools in Hungary, Slovenia, Spain, Qatar, China, Ecuador and Mexico, with Britannica Shanghai as its sole Chinese campus.

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