Beijing Royal School, Beijing

Large private school in Changping established in 1996, around 3,000 students with roughly 1,000 Chinese and 100 foreign teachers. Full IB plus A-Level, AP and the Ontario OSSD, and the only AP Teaching Demonstration School designated by the College Board in China.

BRS is set up as a college-prep route to top-tier US and UK universities, with a published list that includes Harvard, Princeton, Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial. The school is WASC and NEASC accredited, and senior students are encouraged to board on campus to build independence ahead of studying abroad. Annual tuition runs around 200,000 RMB.

Two practical caveats families raise consistently. Location is the first: Changping is roughly an hour and a half from central Beijing, with no metro access, which makes day attendance hard from most expat compounds. Behavioural management has shown up as a friction point at this scale. The school suits families who buy into the boarding-plus-AP machine and want a serious overseas-university pipeline at a price point well below the central international schools, rather than parents who want an expat-style day school.

Comment is mixed and skews towards 'workable, not great'.
A 2024 commenter said the school had been offering inflated salaries during Covid with packages "a lot of perks" to recruit existing Beijing teachers, but a 2025 ex-teacher said most staff still earned less than 30,000 RMB and pushed back on quoted 42,000 figures.
Days are reported as roughly 8am to 5:30pm with 226 listed teacher-student contact days, helping explain higher headline pay.
One 2024 commenter called Royal a usable starting point alongside Huijia for first international roles, noting friends there did not outwardly hate the job.
Negative voices in 2024 grouped Royal with Huijia, Aidi, BIBS and Springboard as Beijing schools to avoid, and described it as not strong academically.
A 2025 commenter compared it favourably to Limai, calling the comparison "chalk and cheese" with Royal the better option.
Older anecdotes describe the Changping campus as remote, more than 20 minutes from a metro stop, and far from central Beijing entertainment.
Both Beijing Royal and the Haidian International School are described in one teacher post as run by the same family, which surfaces in salary discussions.