Exploring the ‘White men’ dominance of senior leaders in premium international schools

By 2022 there were over 13,000 private schools worldwide classified as delivering a non-national curriculum in English outside an English-speaking nation. Reports on the diversity of senior leaders of the “premium traditional international school” has always revealed a Western men bias although little has been reported about race. We report on the body of “premium non-traditional international schools”, those belonging to a branded, corporate, profit-driven grouping where we hypothesised that a greater diversity might exist with regard to sex and race. Our survey of the websites of 247 schools belonging to 10 major groupings reveals, from photographic evidence, that 88% of senior leaders are White, and 64% are White men. This finding is very similar to a recent report into diversity among the premium traditional sector. We explore this situation and offer for discussion two sets of possible reasons. An unwritten truth pertains that the recruitment of senior leaders is biased towards White men, whilst at another level the uncertainty, risks, and commercialisation of the field might be more attractive to White men. Both lead to a situation that is rarely questioned or discussed.