Haidian Kaiwen Academy, Beijing | International Schools Guide

A garden campus at the foot of Yuquan Mountain, close to Peking and Tsinghua, with the budget and the building stock to look the part. The school sits inside the Kaiwen Education group, a Shenzhen-listed company that has carried delisting warnings and reshuffled how the schools sit on its balance sheet. Inside the gates, the picture is more conventionally Haidian: a Chinese-national student body, ambitious parents, AP and A-Level tracks layered onto a bilingual through-school, and a leadership chart that has turned over more than is comfortable.

Campus and facilities. Nearly 400 mu of landscaped grounds, full sports stack including a golf driving range, a 600-seat auditorium, well-fitted science labs, and boarding on site. The physical plant is in the top tier for the city.

University outcomes. Small graduating cohorts pull a long offer list. Recent classes have landed places at Duke, Cambridge, Oxford, UC Berkeley, UCLA and Imperial, with high Top-50 US placement rates. Counselling starts early and is visibly resourced.

Bilingual programme breadth. K-12 bilingual through-school with 22 AP courses and a parallel IGCSE/A-Level route in upper years. Cognia, College Board, Cambridge CAIE and Oxford AQA accreditations are all in place.

Considerations

Leadership churn. Staff-side accounts describe a high number of directors over a short run of years, with abrupt departures and tight central control from group HQ. The pattern shows up across years rather than as a one-off.
Management style. Foreign teachers describe a top-down administration, cliques, and firings that arrive without much warning. Pay and housing are competitive, which softens the picture but does not erase it.
Group financial position. Kaiwen Education has run at a loss for most of its years as a listed company and has carried delisting risk warnings into 2025. Operational control of the two schools sits under separate entities now, with the listed group taking campus rent, brand and consulting fees rather than tuition. Day-to-day teaching continues, but the corporate backdrop is not the quiet one the marketing suggests.
Student profile. Predominantly Chinese-passport families on a domestic gaokao-alternative track. The student body and rhythm sit closer to a high-end Chinese private school than to an expat international school, which suits some families and not others.
Fees. K at RMB 180,000 rising to RMB 270,000 in high school, plus bus and boarding. Fees sit in the upper band for Beijing bilinguals, in line with what the campus and counselling promise.