Beijing

Beijing’s foreign-resident count fell about 41.5 per cent between the 2010 and 2020 censuses — from 107,445 to 62,812 — and industry analysis puts the city’s long-term foreign workforce at roughly 22,000 today, down from about 37,000 a decade ago. The community that remains skews toward embassies, international organisations and the senior end of corporate China, and it behaves accordingly: shorter postings, more churn, more mid-year movement. ↗ ↗

For an incoming family this is mostly good news. The premium schools — ISB, WAB, Dulwich, BSB — were built for a bigger market and now compete harder for students. Waitlists still exist at popular entry years, but the multi-year queues of the 2010s are largely a memory, and mid-year places open regularly as postings rotate. The schools will not say this in their marketing; their admissions teams will say it on the phone.

One structural quirk: Beijing’s premium tier is unusually IB-heavy. ISB, WAB and BCIS all run IB frameworks; the British line (Dulwich, BSB, Harrow) is the alternative, and a pure American-curriculum option barely exists at the top end. Read our curriculum guide before assuming the curriculum you want is on offer at the school you want.

Like Shanghai, Beijing separates schools by law. The schools on this page are licensed as schools for children of foreign nationals under the municipality’s administrative measures: the Beijing Municipal Education Commission issues the operating licence, and the regulation even fixes the naming format — new schools must be styled “Beijing xx School for Children of Foreign Nationals” in Chinese. Schools in this category must also teach Chinese language and culture courses. ↗

Eligibility extends beyond simple foreign passports. With district education-authority approval, these schools may also enrol children of Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan residents, children of Chinese citizens legally settled overseas, and children of officially “introduced talents”. Children holding only PRC nationality are otherwise barred — their route is the bilingual private sector, where schools like Yew Wah operate under different rules. ↗

Keystone Academy is the deliberate exception — a bilingual Chinese-English immersion school founded in 2014 that accepts both foreign and Chinese students and requires boarding from Grade 9. It sits outside the foreign-passport category and is the market’s most ambitious attempt at a genuinely two-culture school. ↗

Beijing prices in RMB and the leading schools publish full schedules. Current official figures:

• International School of Beijing (Shunyi; 2026-27): RMB 247,800 (Early Years full-day), RMB 291,800 (Kindergarten), RMB 311,800 (Grades 3-5), RMB 331,800 (Grades 6-8), RMB 351,800 (Grades 9-10), RMB 361,800 (Grades 11-12) — plus a RMB 2,800 application fee and a one-time RMB 18,000 entry fee. ↗
• Western Academy of Beijing (Chaoyang, edge of Shunyi; 2026-27): RMB 249,000 (Early Years full-day), RMB 296,000 (Grade 1), RMB 317,400 (Grades 2-5), RMB 336,800 (Grades 6-8), RMB 370,800 (Grades 9-10), RMB 380,500 (Grades 11-12) — and school-bus transport within the WAB network is included in tuition, a genuine differentiator. ↗
• Dulwich College Beijing (Shunyi): RMB 2,900 application fee, refundable placement deposit, one-time RMB 15,000 capital development fee; aggregated 2026-27 data puts tuition at RMB 251,000 in early years rising to RMB 385,000 in Grades 11-12. ↗
• The British School of Beijing (Nord Anglia, two campuses): Sanlitun is the city primary school — 2025-26 tuition RMB 247,000 (reception) to RMB 311,400 (Years 4-6), plus a RMB 2,800 application fee, RMB 16,000 refundable deposit, RMB 17,500-23,000 annual bus and a one-off RMB 25,000 EAL charge. The Shunyi campus runs all-through to RMB 369,000 in Years 11-12 per aggregated published prices. ↗
• YCIS Beijing (Chaoyang; 2025-26): RMB 239,000 (K3-K4), RMB 287,000-295,000 (primary), RMB 316,000 (Years 7-9), RMB 334,000 (Years 10-13, spanning IGCSE, HKDSE and IB) — plus a RMB 2,500 application fee and refundable RMB 20,000 deposit. YCIS is also launching an HKDSE stream with a roughly 33 per cent founding-student tuition discount. ↗
• Keystone Academy (Shunyi; 2026-27): RMB 294,150 (primary), RMB 325,650 (middle), RMB 328,800 (high school) — plus RMB 110,250 a year for boarding and meals, required from Grade 9. ↗
• Harrow International School Beijing (Shunyi): we could not verify a current first-party schedule; third-party compilations put tuition around RMB 228,600-356,600 by year group. Confirm with admissions. ↗
• Beijing City International School (Chaoyang): the practical CBD IB option, at a secondary-compiled RMB 244,000-343,500 — we have not verified a first-party schedule. ↗

Beijing’s school map has two poles. Shunyi District, northeast of the city near the airport, is the classic expat-villa cluster: gated compounds with gardens, and ISB, Dulwich, BSB Shunyi, Harrow and Keystone within a short bus ride of each other. Families who choose Shunyi get space, cleaner air on marginal days and a ready-made expat community — at the cost of distance from the city’s cultural life.

The city option runs through Chaoyang: WAB on the Shunyi border, YCIS and BCIS closer in, and BSB Sanlitun beside the embassy district for the primary years. Families in Sanlitun or Liangmaqiao apartments — diplomats especially — can keep a genuinely urban life, but the all-through choices thin out after Year 6, and many city families eventually face the Shunyi bus run for secondary school.

The decision rule parents repeat: if your work is in the CBD and your children are young, the city works; once secondary school looms, most families either move to Shunyi or commit to the bus. Choose the school before the compound — villa landlords and employers’ housing desks will both ask which school you picked.

Older guides treat Beijing’s air as a deal-breaker. The data no longer supports that framing. The city’s annual average PM2.5 fell from 89.5 µg/m³ in 2013 to 30.5 µg/m³ in 2024 — a 65.9 per cent drop — with 290 good-air days in 2024, the most since monitoring began, and heavily polluted days down from 58 a year to two. ↗

The honest caveats: 30 µg/m³ is still above the WHO guideline, winter heating season and dust events still produce bad weeks, and every serious school keeps indoor-air filtration and an AQI policy for outdoor play. Ask schools for their air-quality protocol — filtration, indoor PE thresholds, monitoring — and check a live AQI feed for a month before you move rather than relying on a decade-old reputation.

The year starts in August. For WAB and ISB, applying six to twelve months ahead remains realistic advice for popular entry years, but Beijing’s churn means mid-year entry is more feasible here than in most Asian hubs — schools are built around diplomatic rotation. WAB formalises it: tuition is prorated at 10 per cent per calendar month for students enrolling after the October break. ↗ ↗

Budget for application fees of RMB 2,100-2,900 per school, assessments (play-based early years, computerised tests and interviews later), and refundable deposits of RMB 15,000-20,000 at acceptance. Note the extras that differentiate otherwise similar schools: WAB includes the bus; BSB charges RMB 17,500-23,000 for it and adds a RMB 25,000 EAL fee where needed.

Boarding deserves its own conversation. Keystone requires it from Grade 9; for expat families based in Beijing it is a lifestyle choice rather than a necessity, but for families posted elsewhere in China it is the main route to a Beijing education. Ask to see the boarding houses and meet the residential faculty — the model is American-style, with teacher families living in residence.

Every fee figure traces to our research dossier. Primary sources: the official fee pages of ISB, WAB, Dulwich Beijing, BSB Sanlitun and Keystone Academy; the Beijing municipal regulation on schools for children of foreign nationals; and the Beijing Municipal Ecology and Environment Bureau’s 2024 air-quality results. Secondary compilations (Harrow, BCIS figures) are graded low confidence in the dossier and should be confirmed with the schools.

Fees and policies expire. This page was researched on 2 September 2026 and is re-verified each academic year — see our research standard, the school directory, the guides hub and corrections if you spot something stale.