Eton campus Photos: Courtesy of Luo Yangdanlin

By Sun Wei in London

About a month after it ended, Luo Yangdanlin, 14, now home in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, was still reliving her three-week summer school at the Eton College Summer Course in England.

Luo's body was still set on the "Eton biological clock." She awakened at 7 am promptly with an initial urge to line up, meal tray in hand, for breakfast in the dining hall. At 11 am she fondly thought back to it as "drama time."

English phrases, such as "sorry" and "excuse me," popped from her mouth unconsciously whenever she bumped accidentally into Chinese classmates or borrowed something from them.

Luo realized that the Eton summer school experience was carved deep into her memory, and she couldn't let it go.

While she first considered it an exploratory trip, returning to the UK has become her goal. Luo recently wrote in her blog, "I will study hard to go back to England" in order to eventually study at Oxford or Cambridge, which she had visited during her stay.

"I miss all the things about England - Eton, Oxford, Cambridge, my teachers and all my friends in the summer school," Luo said in a nostalgic tone.

The best of the best

Luo was one of 80 Chinese teenagers who participated in the Eton Summer Course this year. British Education Ltd (BE), a Shanghai-headquartered company that has been placing Chinese students in the summer course since 2005, runs the program. It also has offices in London, Beijing, Chengdu and Shenzhen.

BE managing director and founder William Vanbergen is a former Eton chess team captain who used his alumni contacts to establish the course.

Eton College Summer Course recruited 40 boys in 2005. With an increasing demand on Chinese mainland, the course now has 80 slots, 40 boys and 40 girls between the ages of 13 and 17. All were selected from the top middle schools in China such as Beijing No. 4 Middle School.

"Students need to pass a written test and an interview to get the offer," Xu Zhengqing, manager of the summer course, told the Global Times.

"We also take their teachers' comments about their personalities and characters, comprehensive abilities, and science levels into account," Xu said.

Course members are tested again upon arrival at Eton and placed in groups according to their abilities. "This allows each student the best opportunity to improve as much as possible during their time in Eton," according to Eton's website.

Classes are kept as small as 10 to 13 members, in order to guarantee students as much time as possible to interact with teachers and course assistants. UK Eton boys are invited to act as hosts and teaching assistants to look after the Chinese students.

For three weeks, they lived in an Eton boarding house, in exactly the same con-ditions and environment as the Eton boys who live there during the regular term.

Housed separately, boys and girls enjoy individual rooms, and each house has a housemaster or housemistress, a matron, an interpreter, two teachers and course assistants.

Absorbing UK culture

In the mornings, students have a variety of language-based lessons, including oral English, drama, public speaking, applied linguistics and university style lectures on a variety of topics concerning contemporary Britain.

In the afternoons, they go on trips to famous places such as the British Museum, National Gallery, Windsor Castle, Oxford and Cambridge universities, the Globe Theater, Wimbledon or the Chelsea Football Club. The trips are used as a basis for discussions and lessons. The houses also compete against one another in traditional British sports such as rugby, soccer and cricket as well as sports unique to Eton, such the Biscuit Game and the Eton Fives, a form of squash that originated there.

Zheng Zhitong, a student with Beijing No.4 Middle School who attended the 2006 summer course, said he gained a strong posh British accent after taking English lessons there and that his parents said he acted more like a gentleman. "It also gave me a chance to learn how students in other countries study and live," Zheng added.

Luo loved the drama lessons most, and she was very proud of her team's performance in the drama competition when the students created a story incorporating Shakespeare's Seven Ages of Man with a love letter and traditional African music.

"It is very impressive that during their first days in Eton, students need an interpreter's help, but they end up performing a 20-minute drama in English," Xu said, adding that the course not only improves their English skills with an understanding of culture and history, but also builds up their confidence and independence.

According to Eton, the students show an average improvement of 25 percent in their English skills, based on the result of tests given at the end of the course.

Luo Yangdanlin's summer school history lessons were in this lecture hall that is over 400 years old.  Photos: Courtesy of Luo Yangdanlin

High price investments

The price for the 2010 Eton Summer Course was 57,000 yuan ($8,388), with a provisional price for 2011 listed at 58,000 yuan listed on its website.

While UK and US parents pay hundreds of dollars - or more - for their kids' summer schools, Chinese parents who can afford it are paying much more.

"Wealthy Chinese are very keen on making sure that their children have the best education available, it's a deep-seated cultural requirement dating back to Confucian times," the Telegraph newspaper quoted BE founder Vanbergen as saying.

"No parents want their child to be left behind as competition intensifies," Dong Ying, manager of an international student exchange program in London, told the Global Times, adding that the growing number of Chinese middle- and upper-class families want to give their kids an edge by investing in their educations.

"Eton Summer Course is one of the few aiming at the high-end market," Dong said, adding that the average fee for a three-week summer school is around $4,500, with variations due to different accommodations, facilities and lengths of course periods.

"It's a little bit more expensive than other summer schools but it is worthwhile," Xu said, adding that the Chinese students are privileged to use facilities that are otherwise exclusive to Eton boys. "Eton has limited open days to the public and limited open areas available for visitors," she said.

Realizing their dreams

Some Chinese students find their dreams during their trips and are self-motivated to realize them in the future. "We do have students admitted to Eton College," Xu said, citing an example of a student surnamed Yang, who was admitted to Eton College after the summer course in 2005. After two years of study in Eton, Yang was admitted to Stanford University in California.

Viewed as a "green channel" for Chinese students to study abroad, the foreign summer schools and camps are increasing in popularity.

According to an August 15 Los Angeles Times report, there are about 50,000 Chinese youngsters this year jetting across the Pacific to experience American summer camps and schools.

A consultant surnamed Zhang with Global IELTS School, one of the largest English training companies in China, told the Global Times, "The applications for our Global Study Tour are growing at a speed of 30 to 50 percent annually."

Varying from two weeks to eight weeks in July and August, summer schools give children a taste of studying abroad by settling them in colleges and immersing them in a pure English environment.

Different from summer schools for local students, which focus either on academic or non-academic materials including performing arts, music, sports, mathematics, the global summer schools for Chinese students mainly focus on languages and cultural exchange.

Catering to Chinese parents' belief in "those who travel far know much," many travel agencies, educational institutions and study abroad agencies have devised multiple routes with destinations ranging from the US, Canada, England, France, Germany, Australia, to Japan, Singapore and more. And right after the summer schools end, they begin to advertise heavily for winter schools.

However, some parents doubt whether the journey can pay off if it is only a "luxury group travel package." The average cost of around $5,000 for a summer school isn't affordable to most Chinese families.

Most of the students who attend are enrolled in elite high schools and their parents are "gold-collar" workers in Beijing and Shanghai. These high-spending parents also have high expectations for the summer schools.

A one day summer school schedule. Photos: Courtesy of Luo Yangdanlin

Buyer beware

There are critics. A statistic by New Oriental Education & Technology Group revealed that 31.66 percent of participants in different summer school programs ranked some as "high input with low output."

Parents complained that the Chinese summer school industry lacks guidelines and regulations concerning the fees. A parent surnamed Zhao, who accompanied her child to a UK summer school, said that when she arrived, she found out the itinerary had been shortened and that the Chinese travel agent had overcharged her.

Manager Dong said that currently there are few regulations restricting fees in the industry. Some organizers violated travel agency regulations due to their non-professional services.

"They sold their global study tour products without providing detailed standards of dining and accommodations," Dong added, warning that applicants need to be more careful in choosing summer schools.

With increasingly fierce competition in the industry and consumers being more sophisticated, organizers are forced to specialize in different ways.

Some summer schools and camps in the US specialize in such subjects as the American judicial system, journalism, arts, drama, or getting into US colleges.

The Harvard University Summer School organizes students to visit Ivy League schools and invites admission committee members to give students introductory lectures on applying to universities, said Qiyong Chen with Woodpecker International Education Consulting.

These high quality summer schools also set a high bar for admissions. "It is like a mini-application for universities," Chen said.