Selling Canadian Teaching in China

Enterprising B.C. school districts are getting into the export business by way of Canadian school curricula. Last October Ray LeMoigne came home to Vanderhoof feeling pretty good about his business trip to China. He had lined up a number of prospective buyers and forged relationships that he was confident would pay dividends in the future.?

Selling Canadian Teaching to China | BCBusiness
Every year hundreds of Chinese high-school students graduate from offshore schools with B.C. diplomas.

Enterprising B.C. school districts are getting into the export business by way of Canadian school curricula.

Last October Ray LeMoigne came home to Vanderhoof feeling pretty good about his business trip to China. He had lined up a number of prospective buyers and forged relationships that he was confident would pay dividends in the future.


Unlike many of his neighbours in the tiny town northwest of Prince George, LeMoigne wasn’t selling logs or lumber, or at least not directly. As the superintendent of the Nechako Lakes 91 school district, LeMoigne was selling education. More specifically, he was trying to interest Chinese buyers in a B.C.-certified high-school curriculum.


B.C.’s is one of seven provincial education ministries that accredit offshore schools, offering them, for a fee, the right to teach Canadian curricula and award Canadian diplomas. It is the only province, however, that lets school districts operate as profit-making intermediaries.


A report published by the Asia Pacific Foundation in May this year singles out B.C. for its entrepreneurial approach to offshore schools. As author Lia Cosco explains in an interview, “In B.C., the school district becomes the middle body and in some cases it’s the school district that’s actually initiating contact and the creation of new schools and doing the business from the get-go.” By contrast, Cosco says, “in the other provinces, the government sits back and waits for interested parties to come to them asking for accreditation.”


Ray LeMoigne’s trip to China is the kind of school-district-led initiative that is unique to B.C. He met with executives from R&F Properties, one of China’s largest developers, which is in the process of building a 175,000-person community in the Beijing suburb of Xianghe. The developer told LeMoigne it wants a new B.C. school offering grades 10, 11 and 12 to be one of the options for residents.


“When this was presented, I said, ‘Well, this is quite a huge opportunity,’” recalls LeMoigne. He arranged a meeting with the trade commission office and after a five-hour discussion they signed a memorandum of understanding for cooperation.


LeMoigne’s job has expanded from educator to entrepreneur thanks to a 2002 amendment to the School Act that allows individual school boards to start their own international education companies. Since Bill 34 was passed, six school districts have started companies offering services ranging from professional development and curriculum consultation to on-the-ground administration of B.C.-accredited schools. The idea is that individual school districts can make money overseas to pad their budgets back home. Abbotsford’s School District No. 34 Business Co., for instance, made $3.7 million in offshore tuition fees in 2010. 


Nechako’s School District No. 91 Business Co. was formed in March 2011, with LeMoigne at the helm. Although his offshore ventures are still in the planning stages, his goal is to earn the Nechako Lakes schools $1 million a year in additional revenue. The Xianghe project is slated to open in 2014, but LeMoigne has also inked agreements for a smaller plan to create a B.C. school within an existing Xianghe high school that’s expected to open in September 2012. He’s starting small, but he sees opportunities everywhere. In marathon meetings with Chinese developers and officials on his recent trip, he found himself asking, “How big can this be?”


With Nechako Lakes 91 forced to cut $3.4 million from its budget last year due to declining enrollment, the question arises: why open new schools in China while cutting back at home? But LeMoigne says that’s exactly why he’s reaching out to China – the revenue from tuition and consultation fees could help solve some of the district’s budgetary problems. 


Having caught the entrepreneurial bug, LeMoigne is now looking beyond education. He’s negotiating for the new school to be built according to the same rules as B.C. schools, which means conforming with the Wood First Act, a 2009 law requiring that new publicly funded buildings use B.C. wood. He doesn’t stop there, either: “There was great interest in that. And then we thought, ‘Well, what about all these homes you’re building?’” 


International education is a $1.8-billion business in B.C., according to an April 2011 report by the B.C. Council for International Education. And even though offshore schools account for only a small part of that number, they produce B.C.-educated students who are more likely to come here as international students for their post-secondary education. That’s the big picture; the smaller picture looks more like educators transforming themselves into exporters and chasing opportunities that might benefit their districts. 


Cosco has her doubts about offshore schools in general, given the potential for growing inequality between the districts that run these ventures and those that don’t, but she’s impressed by the kind of entrepreneurial hustle people like LeMoigne are showing. “It takes one person on the board who says, ‘You know what? International education is huge; we see the numbers, it benefits the British Columbian economy’ to make something happen.”


Whether more B.C. educators follow LeMoigne’s lead remains to be seen. At the very least, though, school board meetings are getting more interesting in B.C.