49Bloomberg Businessweek March 9, 2020
of comparable quality to the mother ship. Staff in the U.K.
describe Haileybury as on par with Eton and St. Paul’s School
( John Milton, Edmond Halley), although the perspective isn’t
universally shared. Turner says Haileybury “was never a school
for the aristocracy, and it was never an academically brilliant
school. I would say it is a very respectable school.” Its most
recent parentheses-worthy alumnus is Christopher Nolan.
The Almaty school opened in 2008 with a ceremony featur-
ing red balloons bearing the Haileybury coat of arms, musicians
in Kazakh costumes, and a fluttering Union Jack. Enrollment
that first year was 420, with pupils ranging in age from 5 to 14.
There were growing pains as the school tried to connect with
its student body. “The Kazakh culture kind of beat the British
culture,” recalls Danat Tungushbayev, who attended
early on and is now a student at University College
London. “Although they were trying to implement
a lot of British stuff, it still felt like another ordinary school.”
The British stuff carried on and grew. By 2014, enrollment
had risen to 544, including pupils over the age of 16. Older
students began taking A-levels, the main academic exam for
British students leaving school at 18, eventually tripling the
share who got the highest grades to a respectable 54%. (The
best-performing U.K. private schools push 90%.) Distinguished
guests visited from the U.K., including comedian Dom Joly and
footballer David Beckham. Joly, a Haileybury alum, later wrote
in a column that the Almaty headmaster had confessed to asking
an IT teacher to Photoshop sleeves onto a picture of Beckham,
saying “an Englishman sporting tattoos up on the wall—it’s just
not right.” (Haileybury couldn’t verify the anecdote.)
Kazakh elites showed up, too—none so prominent as
Nazarbayev, whose first visit, some three months after the
school’s opening, saw the construction of a paved road, drain-
age gutters, and new lighting within 36 hours, according to
a teacher who’s since left the school. “It’s amazing what gets
done when the president’s coming,” the teacher says. The
entire day passed, with students growing increasingly res-
tive, before the presidential entourage appeared in darkness
around 5 in the evening. Nazarbayev took a tour, with teach-
ers in position to deliver lessons despite the hour. “I like what
I see,” he said. “Please open another school, in Astana.”
T
hree years later, Haileybury Astana opened 604 miles to
the north. The Times of London and Source Material, a
nonprofit journalism organization, reported last February that
the early financing for the school included a $17.3 million loan
from Kazzinc, a unit of British-Swiss mining giant Glencore. The
report said that the loan was repaid in 2012, and that the com-
pany also reported a $23 million investment in the school that
year, a 56% stake that it transferred in 2016 to Utemuratov’s
foundation. The article, which drew on Russian-language
Kazakh corporate filings, also noted that Nazarbayev’s foun-
dation was the next-largest stakeholder, with 26%. (The spokes-
person for Verny wrote in a statement that Haileybury Astana
is noncommercial and that Utemuratov’s foundation’s prop-
erty can’t be legally transferred to its founder. “This is a charity
Locations of independent school brands
◼Former British protectorate or colony◼OtherStudy AbroadDATA: ISC RESEARCH, AS OF JULY 2019China
45 schoolsU.A.E.
12
ThailandMyanmarHong
KongMalaysiaSouth
KoreaQatarKazakhstanSingaporeEgyptGeorgiaIndiaNigeriaproject,” the statement said. Glencore’s response to the report-
ing noted that the investment was disclosed in Kazzinc’s finan-
cial statements and said, “Kazzinc has supported the country’s
development over the past 20 years, including through occa-
sional strategic investments in the development of Astana as a
modern capital of Kazakhstan.”)
Like the Almaty branch, Haileybury Astana includes a
number of British trappings. The house names are the same,
and a mounted photograph near the entrance shows a scene
from the home campus: a hot air balloon hovering above a
Romanesque chapel. A mug with an image of Prince Harry and
Meghan Markle sits in the headmaster’s office.
Fees for a year range from $6,214 to $25,717, depending on
the student’s age. The student body makeup is similar at both
schools, though Haileybury Astana includes more diplomats’
children. The school also enters its pupils for the International
Baccalaureate exam rather than the A-level. And the climate is
distinct—Nur-Sultan is the second-coldest world capital after
Ulaanbaatar, situated in a region dubbed Akmola, or “White
Grave.” Racks of insulated parkas line the halls so pupils can
don warm gear as they file out for fire drills. Kim Holmes, head
of the senior school, keeps a chart in her office detailing how
long children can play outside in given temperatures. The cam-
pus, she says, can feel like an “island in the snow.”
One fall afternoon, a class of 12-year-olds taught by a
Greek-American woman named Anastasia Michala could be
found reading Boy, an autobiographical book by Roald Dahl
describing, strangely enough, the brutalities he suffered at
Repton in the 1930s. Michala was also encouraging her pupils
to read over short essays they’d composed about important
moments in their lives. The essays, written by hand and meant
to include both painful moments and proudest achievements,
revealed something of the culturally sprawling backgrounds of
the children, few of whom spoke English as a first language. “I
was born on October 11th 2006 at night,” one read. “My father
was German and my mother was kazakh and my father had
to fly to Germany and go to work but he could not leave us