The View from East Asia

Wrapping up the EARCOS Leadership Conference in Kuala Lumpur, and struck by the school-to-school consistency of the trends we are hearing in this sector:

• Changing school demographics, with ever fewer Western expats and more East and South Asian families as well as locals and dual passport holders;
• With these changes, a greater variety of outcome expectations from schools, some of which throw into sharp relief extant divides between subgroups in the school;
• Increasing price sensitivity from the increasing number of self-pay families, including many expats not on formerly standard packages; and
• Challenges to governance and management from shifting regulatory and licensing practices, particularly in Indonesia and China.

We captured each of these in trend forecasts years ago, but now they seem to be front and center for most schools.