Current Issues in Comparative Education (CICE) - Volume 25 - Issue 1 - Winter 2023 - Education as an international export, marketing elite, English schools as franchises overseas

Oct 15, 2026

A qualitative textual analysis examines how Dulwich College and Harrow School adapt their marketing language and focus as overseas franchise brands. Franchised branches expanded from their founding origins, sustaining privilege across contexts by shifting promotional framing according to franchise status, relative age, and sociocultural location. Using international schools as enclosures of privilege, the study identifies an emergent hybrid model that blends local and international curricula, complicating conventional international-school categories and directing future research toward elite franchising.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages22

Reading Time55 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Background

Research Questions

Study Approach and Sources

Findings and Implications

Current Issues in Comparative Education (CICE), Volume 25, Issue 1, Winter 2023 Education as an international export: Marketing elite, English schools as franchises overseas Stefano Hollis Stanford University Graduate School of Education A growing portion of international schools are franchised branches of schools originally founded in other countries. The ﬁ rst of such schools opened in 1996 and there are now almost 100 globally. Expansionist schools are primarily elite, English private schools, with concentrations of their franchises developing in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and East Asia over the past quarter of a century—particularly in mainland China over the past decade. This study explores how such schools adapt the language and focus of their marketing and, in doing so, sustain their privilege across various contexts. A qualitative textual analysis is conducted of the websites of 11 schools run by Dulwich College and Harrow School, the ﬁ rst brands to expand overseas and with the most extensive networks of schools today. A lens of international schools as enclosures of privilege is used to demonstrate how schools adapt themselves and their framing. The study ﬁ nds the promotional focus of the schools depends not just on whether they are the founding school or a franchise, but also on their relative ages, and on their varying locations within speciﬁc sociocultural contexts. An emergent hybrid model, catering to both local and international curricula, blends the local with the global and complicates the conventional notion of the international school. Finally, the study suggests that further research is focused on the franchising of elite education, particularly as the focal point of expansion begins to shift away from the mainland Chinese boom of the past decade. Keywords: international education, international schools, school expansion, elite education, oversees franchise schools Introduction In 1572, Queen Elizabeth I granted a royal charter opening Harrow School in north London (Tyerman, 2000) . Just some decades later in 1619 and on the other side of the city, Dulwich College was founded (Blanch, 1877) . The schools’ long histories, notable alumni, and strong academic records—as well as some of the highest fees in England—have made them both prominent and illustrious names within a busy market for private secondary schools in the UK (Peel, 2021) . Both were also the ﬁrst anglophone schools, hundreds of years later, to expand transnationally in the form of overseas franchise schools. © 2023, Current Issues in Comparative Education, Teachers College, Columbia University. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Current Issues in Comparative Education 23(2), 51-72 . Hollis Dulwich pioneered the trend by opening a franchise in Phuket, Thailand in 1996, with Harrow opening in Bangkok in 1998 (Bunnell, 2008a) . Today, there are over 73 franchise schools opened by primarily English institutions (Bunnell et al., 2020), but Dulwich and Harrow remain the two schools with the greatest overseas presence. Whilst both schools have been well established in the UK for centuries, there has yet to be focused research into how they might translate their reputation and appeal to remain high-status options both across new cultural contexts and in spite of their expansion widening access to their brand names. With this emergent trend “operating within the periphery of the blurred ﬁeld of‘international schools’” (Bunnell, 2008a, p. 384), so far there has been little scholarly attention paid to the overseas franchises of elite, anglophone schools. Research looks more generally at international schooling (Hayden & Thompson, 1995; Pearce, 2013), or at the further developed “parallel phenomenon”(Bunnell, 2008a, p. 384) of transnational expansion in higher education (Becker, 2010; Farrugia & Lane, 2013; Healey, 2015; Kosmützky & Putty, 2016; Lane, 2011; Merola, 2016; Wilkins & Huisman, 2012, 2015) . Studies have mostly documented the ex

FAQs

What does the study investigate about franchise international schools?

It investigates how Dulwich College and Harrow School adapt their marketing language and promotional framing as overseas franchises, sustaining privilege in different contexts.

How is the research conducted?

The study uses qualitative textual analysis of the websites of 11 schools run by Dulwich College and Harrow School.

What factors influence the schools’ promotional focus?

The promotional focus depends on whether the school is the founding institution or a franchise, its relative age, and its location within specific sociocultural contexts.

Oct 15, 2026

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