Why some of Britain's top schools are replicating themselves in the Far East

In China you can see replicas of the Eiffel Tower, the Great Pyramid, St Peter’s Square and a large slice of Amsterdam. But more remarkable than any of them in its own way is a red-brick military-academy-style building in the Hongqiao district of Tianjin. It is a replica — or thereabouts — of Wellington College in Berkshire. And unlike a lot of other replicas, it wasn’t built by a Chinese property developer but by Wellington College itself.

Wellington College International Tianjin, which was opened by Prince Andrew in 2010, is more or less a full-size working model of its mother school, albeit without the full complement of rugby pitches (there is one Astroturf pitch) or boarding houses (its first boarders arrive this month). Its website brims with pictures of children playing the trombone, starring in last year’s production of Bugsy Malone and enjoying a school trip to Berlin. Only an uncommon emphasis on Mandarin — plus an invitation to translate the page into that language — give the game away that this is not a school in England.

Soon there will be a pair of Wellingtons in China: another replica is due to open in Shanghai next August. While the coalition dreams on about independent schools sponsoring academies in Britain, it is in the Far East that many are choosing to replicate themselves.

Dulwich College is well on its way to becoming an international brand, with three schools in China and one in Seoul. None is as architecturally derivative of their mother institution as are the Chinese Wellingtons — Shanghai has a rather half-hearted brick and concrete bell tower, but that is about it — but nevertheless seek to replicate a public-school experience. For team-building, they go camping on the Great Wall and building yurts in Inner Mongolia. There is even a Dulwich College Asia Games, at which all four Far Eastern branches compete.