This channel 4 documentary follows Russian international property broker Dina Karpova, who is capitalising on Russia's love for all things English. Dina is an agent to the super-rich in Russia, who want their children to attend the top British schools and so high-tracking them into British high society. Dina says “our clients do want to go to top schools, they do want their kids to be with best British families and be friends with them. There is not one company in Russia that works with top schools or prepares children to go to top schools. The only choice is me.” There are, however, school agents in the Middle East and Asia doing all they can to get their students into schools in the UK. “Competition is fierce, there is no question about it. Now a lot of british schools cap the number of foreign students. You compete with a lot of asian kids who are breeded like racehorses to get into the system".
Dina found this niche in the market when her own son, Ivan, began boarding at Westminster, one of the best public schools in England. Ivan, who speaks with a British accent, boards at Westminster while Dina lives in Moscow. Ivan had a very cosmopolitan upbringing. She wanted to expose him to a lot of culture so he lived in Russia in his early years, then the US and now Britain.
Dina on the other hand had a very different upbringing to Ivan. She wasn’t allowed to speak to foreigners. Her parents were physicists working on top secret nuclear weapons for the government. She had a serious lack of freedom but had a high standard of living. She graduated as an aerospace engineer but the breakdown on communism in the 1990s brought down her privileged life as they were owed a years worth of salary by the government, they had sold everything and had no money. She moved to new York and became a successful businesswoman.
According to Dina “it is quite a trend now in Russia to send your children to England” and “our clients want to match the culture, they don’t want to be seen as Russians”. Charles, an educational consultant that works with Dina, said “traditionally a lot of the great schools have educated a lot of the ruling families so that culture is there and the new Russians are doing their very best to replicate the lifestyles of the tsarists elite and part of that is being educated in the west”. Dina's client in the documentary wants his 11 year old son and stepson to go to a British public school. Dina sends her clients children on a residential course that would introduce them to the English aristocracy and teach them how to blend in. First they learn how to play polo. Dina tells them that if they play polo they will become part of high society. Then they learn how to shoot and one of the teachers messed up the boys room and then instructed them how to clean it and keep it when they are staying at a persons house, like showing them how their bed should be made and what to do after having a bath. They also had intensive academic training to help with the entry exams for the schools. They are also taken with their parents to visit Stowe, one of the top public boarding schools. They are shown around the school by a student who also moved from Russia and soon fall in love with it. The boys and their parents then go on to visit many other schools. The boys receive a conditional offer from one of the public schools and so if they achieve the needed results in January, they will move from Russia to England to attend the school. Charles says “it never ceases to amaze me how brave they are, coming to a new country often speaking only a few words of the language and having to adapt”.
Looking into the future, Dina predicts “that Britain is going to play a huge part in Russian future and I think that is a fantastic thing because these kids will merge the cultures, they’re not going to fight”. Charles adds that “Britain is an extraordinary country in the way that we can integrate so many different people from ethnic backgrounds”.
Image is of Stowe School in Buckinghamshire.
If you live in the UK, you can watch this documentary here
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