EtonHouse invests S$110m in China campus project

Etonhouse International Education Group announced on Wednesday that it is investing S$110 million to open its largest campus project yet in Deyang of Sichuan, China.

When completed in about five years' time, the project will accommodate 5,000 students from kindergarten to high school on three campuses.

"We feel that there is a very strong demand for high-quality education in China, especially in the tier 2 and 3 cities," said Ng Gim Choo, founder and group managing director of the Singapore-based education group.

Cities in China are ranked according to a number of factors including gross domestic product, political administration and population. Tier 1 is the highest rank, which includes cities such as Beijing and Shanghai.

"With the implementation of the second child policy, there will be an increased investment in children's education. Parents are increasingly looking to provide their children with the best environments and programmes in education to nurture 21st-century skills."

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Deyang, a prefecture-level city in Sichuan province, is located about 45 minutes from Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan where four of EtonHouse's 26 schools are located. All the schools are doing well with long wait-lists, said Mrs Ng.

The first part of the Deyang project is a standalone kindergarten campus, which will cover 8,700 square metres and is expected to commence operations in 2019. Another campus dedicated to primary and secondary school will have a land area of 40,000 square metres.

The third campus will handle kindergarten and high school operations over 100,000 square metres. In addition to educational facilities, it will include residential facilities for students and staff as well as a teacher training centre.

EtonHouse runs more than 100 international schools in 12 countries, providing preschool and K-12 education under the International Baccalaureate (IB) programme to more than 12,000 children worldwide.

It started operations in China in 2003, and has 26 campuses in 18 cities there. Its campuses in Suzhou, Wuxi and Nanjing were started by invitation from the Jiangsu provincial government.

In 2013, EtonHouse International School, Suzhou, was ranked in China's 500 Best Elementary Schools, in a study conducted by China Research Group, a non-profit think tank based in Washington, DC.

This article was first published on March 30, 2017.
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