A HEREFORDSHIRE private school has branched out to China and opened a new campus in Shanghai.

Lucton School in north Herefordshire has joined a select group of UK schools following the opening of Lucton School Shanghai this month.

The new purpose-built campus is designed to take 300 full boarding pupils and is a few miles from Shanghai International Airport in Pu Dong.

While there are already a number of UK schools with a presence in China, Lucton believes that this will be the first British Curriculum 100 per cent boarding school in China as most others are either day schools or day schools with a boarding element.

Headteacher of the Herefordshire school, Gill Thorne, was in Shanghai to be part of the opening celebrations.

Lucton School Shanghai will take in pupils at the age of 15, straight from the Chinese compulsory stage of education and they will take IGCSE exams, followed by A-levels, together with an extra-curricular offering designed to provide much of the breadth of activities available in typical UK independent schools, such as Lucton.

Neil Clayton, the founding headmaster of the Shanghai school is also keen to see continued innovation and development in the curriculum as he ensures that China’s cultural and national preferences are fully integrated with Lucton School’s heritage and the British curriculum.

Teacher recruitment has been co-ordinated by Lucton UK and the teachers are nearly all educated in the UK and many have had previous experience of teaching in overseas international schools.

With a population of over 33 million people, Shanghai is the largest city in the world and Lucton School UK, together with their Chinese partners, identified Shanghai as the obvious city to open Lucton’s first Chinese senior campus.

Lucton School already had a presence in Shanghai, having opened Lucton Kindergarten Shanghai in the Gubei area in January, with a second Kindergarten already set to open in March next year.

Plans are also underway for building Lucton’s second Chinese senior school campus and the site for a third Early Years campus has already been identified.