NAS Beijing Fangshan, one of four schools run by Nord Anglia Education in Beijing, abruptly announced its closure on July 5 after the school year ended, according to multiple parents who shared messaging on Chinese social media.
All students have been offered places in NAS Beijing’s Shunyi campus, which opened in 2022 with the first semester’s tuition waived due to the inconvenience.
NAS Fangshan first opened in 2019 and offered elementary, middle, and high school programs to a primarily Chinese student body. It was the first NAS school established by the Nord Anglia Education Group in Beijing, which also runs the Shunyi and Sanlitun campuses of the British School of Beijing.
The most recent post on the school’s WeChat account is dated June 28 and details the graduation ceremony for 6th and 9th graders. Around 30 students were pictured in the post, along with Chinese and foreign faculty members.
Despite its somewhat remote location far from Beijing’s city center, it still attracted many families who trust Nord Anglia’s international reputation.
The sudden news of the Fangshan campus’s closure came only one day before a scheduled open day, where perspective families can tour the school. Social media posts indicate the decision came suddenly to staff as well, with several speculating that the closure could have to do with losing the lease of the land where the campus is located. The school has yet to issue an official letter to the public, instead focusing on relocating its students and staff.
Discussions about the sudden closure popped up on Chinese social media this week, with parents pondering the practicality of sending their children to NAS Shunyi, located over 70km northeast of the Fangshan campus.
The Fangshan campus is located near the southwestern corner of Beijing’s 6th Ring Road, while the Shunyi is located in the northeast corner of the 6th Ring, quite literally on diagonally opposite sides of the city.
Those who are not willing to make the long commute this coming school year are now faced with the urgent need to find a new school for their children.
The closure has caused also anxiety amongst other Beijing private school families and staff, some of whom speculate this could be the first in a series of contractions in the K-12 education sector. Categorized by rapid expansion over the past two decades, the industry now faces excess capacity coupled with a decline in the national birth rate and a slowing economy.
To help families adapt to the change, students who are transferring to NAS Shunyi from NAS Fangshan have been given an exemption from their tuition for the first semester.
Welcoming its first students in the fall of 2022, NAS Shunyi offers a bilingual program that follows a blend of core elements of the Chinese National Curriculum with Western approaches and teaching methods. In the upper grades, they use British standard IGCSE and A-Levels. NAS Beijing, Shunyi, has space for 1,440 students and a boarding capacity for 484 students.
Images: courtesy of schools, xiaohongshu
