Shanghai · History
Twenty years of British education in Minhang District
The British International School Shanghai, Puxi opened in 2005 as a Nord Anglia campus in Huacao, Minhang District. Two decades on, it holds COBIS Beacon Status and has just launched A Levels alongside its established IB Diploma.
Nord Anglia Education opened The British International School Shanghai, Puxi, in 2005 on a campus at 111 Jinguang Road in Huacao Town, Minhang District. The site placed it on the western side of the Huangpu River, away from the older concentration of international schools in Hongqiao and Changning, and gave the growing Puxi expatriate community a dedicated British-curriculum option for the first time.
Origins and Campus
Nord Anglia, which had been building its international schools portfolio since the 1970s, chose Minhang as the location for what would become one of its flagship China campuses. The school takes pupils from 18 months through to 18 years, spanning Early Years Foundation Stage, Primary, Key Stage 3, IGCSE, and, from 2026, sixth form. The campus was designed to accommodate specialist spaces from the outset: it now includes two swimming pools, track and field areas, STEAM centres, a media suite, a film centre, and what the school describes as China's first all-weather rugby pitch.
The Dutch School
One of BISS Puxi's more distinctive features is the Shanghai Dutch School, an integrated strand that sits inside the British school rather than alongside it. Dutch-speaking pupils follow Dutch language lessons as part of their regular timetable, allowing them to maintain mother-tongue proficiency while studying in an English-medium environment. The curriculum mirrors the Dutch and Belgian national language programmes so that students can transfer back to schools in the Netherlands or Belgium without a significant gap. The Shanghai Dutch School has its own dedicated staff and head, with the current head, Elsbeth Hamstra, having joined the school in August 2021.
Curriculum and Accreditation
The school follows the English National Curriculum through Primary and Lower Secondary, transitions to Cambridge IGCSE in Upper Secondary, and offers the IB Diploma Programme for students aged 16 to 18. In the 2026–27 academic year, it added A Levels as a parallel post-16 pathway, giving sixth-formers a specialist route aimed squarely at UK university applications. As reported at the time of the launch, the introduction of A Levels at one of Shanghai's most established British schools was likely to prompt other operators in the city to reassess their own post-16 positioning, given that the IB Diploma had been the dominant sixth-form qualification in the market for years.
The school is accredited by the Council of British International Schools (COBIS), the International Baccalaureate Organisation, and holds recognition from both Cambridge Assessment International Education and Pearson Edexcel. In August 2025, COBIS awarded the school Beacon Status on renewal of its accreditation, a designation indicating exemplary standards in teaching and learning, leadership, and student welfare, and recognising the school as a benchmark for other British international schools globally.
The school draws on Nord Anglia's group-level partnerships with MIT, The Juilliard School, IMG Academy, and UNICEF. Teachers receive subject-specific training through those partnerships; sports programming has involved Olympic 4x100m gold medallist Marlon Devonish. The social impact programme, run with UNICEF, connects to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, with students attending the annual Nord Anglia Summit before leading projects at school level.
Academic Results
In the 2024 IB Diploma cycle, BISS Puxi graduates achieved an average score of 34.5 against a world average of 30. University destinations from that cohort included the University of Oxford, Imperial College London, Carnegie Mellon University, and Seoul National University.
Present Day
The school currently enrols around 1,000 pupils drawn from more than 50 nationalities. Andrew Lancaster serves as principal. The 2026–27 year marks the school's 20th anniversary, a milestone school leadership has used to frame a round of campus investment that includes a new building for performing arts and sport alongside enhanced Primary STEAM facilities. The school runs more than 30 bus routes across the Puxi side of the city.
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