How Harrow brought British boarding to Hong Kong in 2012

Harrow International School Hong Kong opened on 3 September 2012, becoming the first international boarding and day school in Hong Kong. The site it occupies in So Kwun Wat, Tuen Mun, in the western New Territories, had been home to British Army barracks before the land was allocated by the Hong Kong government in late 2009, as part of a deliberate effort to increase the availability of international school places in the territory.

The school was the third in the Harrow family of international schools in Asia, following Harrow Bangkok, which opened in 1998, and Harrow Beijing, which opened in 2005. Its parent institution, Harrow School in London, traces its origins to a Royal Charter granted by Queen Elizabeth I in 1572. The Hong Kong school, the fourth Harrow school in Asia, was followed by Harrow Shanghai in 2016.

The government provided a 3.7-hectare site at a nominal annual lease of HK$1,000, and supported construction with a HK$273 million interest-free loan. In exchange, the school was required to reserve at least half of its places for non-local pupils eligible to study in Hong Kong. That condition has shaped the school's composition from the start: it draws pupils from around 36 nationalities.

Campus and Design

The purpose-built campus sits on roughly nine acres and is housed in a distinctive crescent-shaped building with custom-built facilities near the Gold Coast. It has a stated campus area of 37,000 square metres. Upper-school provision includes science laboratories, specialist art, music and drama rooms, and a recording studio. Boarding accommodation sits within the same footprint, giving the school a residential character unusual for Hong Kong.

Boarding and House System

Boarding begins from Year 6 on a weekly basis, running from Sunday evening to Friday. Just under half of Upper School pupils board, but all pupils, day and boarding, are members of a House, carrying the pastoral structure integral to Harrow School in London. The Prep School has four boys' and three girls' Houses covering Years 6 to 8; the Senior School has four boys' and four girls' Houses for Years 9 to 13. The arrangement makes Harrow Hong Kong the only British school in Hong Kong that closely replicates a UK independent boarding-school experience.

Curriculum and Accreditation

The school is all-through, taking pupils from Nursery at age three through to Year 13 at eighteen. It follows the English National Curriculum in primary and lower secondary, progresses to IGCSE in Years 10 and 11, and delivers A Levels in the Sixth Form, typically three subjects plus an Extended Project Qualification. Examinations are offered through AQA, Cambridge International and Edexcel boards. The school holds accreditation from the Council of International Schools (CIS) and has been inspected under the British Schools Overseas (BSO) programme, administered by the Independent Schools Inspectorate.

Leadership

Ann Haydon led the school for more than a decade after its founding, building the roll from scratch and overseeing the institution through its formative years. She was awarded an MBE for her services to education during that period. In August 2025, Rosie McColl became Head, having previously served as Head of Brighton Girls school in the UK. McColl read English Language and Literature at Oxford and completed an MPhil in Anglo-Irish Literature at Trinity College Dublin. She began her teaching career at Berkhamsted School in 2003, took up a deputy headship there in 2014, and moved to Wellington College as deputy head before relocating to Hong Kong.

Growth and Results

The school roll, which stood at around 1,180 in the 2016-17 academic year, has since grown to approximately 1,600 pupils. In 2025 A Levels, 68% of grades were A* or A, and 30% were A*, with 16 students achieving three or more A* grades. University destinations that year included Oxford, Cambridge, Princeton, Columbia, UPenn, UCL, LSE, and Imperial College London. The 2026 A Level sitting produced 76% A*/A grades and 35% A* grades, with 94% of all grades at A*-B, described by the school as the highest proportion of top grades in its history. At GCSE in 2026, 62% of grades were grade 9 and 87% were grades 9, 8 or A*.

Since 2020, the school has featured in coverage by the South China Morning Post and sector indices as one of the leading international schools in Asia, ranking among the top 150 schools globally and the top 15 in Southeast Asia by the Schools Index. In 2025, the school added an Early Years campus at Kai Tak, dedicated to its youngest cohort, extending the Harrow footprint beyond its original single-site in Tuen Mun.

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