International education in transition: perceptions of expatriate leadership at a Chinese school delivering an Australian curriculum

The burgeoning and transitioning field of private 'non-traditional' English-medium international schooling increasingly involves local schools delivering a Western-oriented curriculum to local children. This is especially evident in mainland China, which since 2019 has housed the most international schools. We present here a qualitative investigation of a Chinese senior school delivering an Australian curriculum. Informed by semi-structured interviews from the Chinese senior school's Australian expatriate leadership, we utilise the concept of ‘Sinicisation’ to explore how the Chinese state highly regulates the transnational movement of the Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) for educational mobility between the school and foreign, primarily Australian higher education. Drawing on the voices of the expatriate leadership, this paper reveals how the localisation of international education has created a unique transnational social space of the Sino-Australian senior school to meet Chinese cultural and parental expectations.