Posted By Damjan DeNoble

I had dinner yesterday with good friend Will Bernholz,who is Marketing Director of Etonkids Educational Group International Division, a Montessori early education chain based in Beijing.

At some point in our conversation we started talking about the efforts that  EtonKids was undertaking to co-market with private clinics in Beijing.  He explained that from an advertising standpoint, private health institutions and private schools are natural companions, since both are referral and image driven.

“Ideally, we want parents to be thinking about us before the baby is even born, so marketing in a maternity ward is about as focused a marketing space as you can find,” he said.

As for the private clinics, “Their target market population attends our schools.”

The cost of private schools like Eton Kids can range anywhere from RMB 20,000 to RMB 150,000 or more depending on program.  In theory, parents who can afford to pay 20,000RMB per year for pre-K education, can probably afford to pay for more expensive health care. To help parents out, EtonKids has deals with private clinics that give discounts at both the clinic and at Eton;

“A referral from us gives discounts on check ups, and a referral from a clinic gives parents program benefits.”

For Western parents this sort of relationship between private clinics and the school is probably not new.  I was curious to know, however, how Chinese parents see foreign run private clinics.

Will responded by pointing out another characteristic that education and health have in common;

“Chinese parents aspire to [foreign run private health care].  Parents are putting these kids into Pre-K…this is a new thing for China…but it’s old in the sense that it’s all about giving your children the best...just like there maybe be an attitude that western medicine is more technologically advanced, it’s the same with education…and the two perceptions reinforce one another.“

When I asked him to explain ‘aspire to’, Will said that “this kind of client base simply wants to see a foreign clinic.”

This symbiotic relationship made me think of every development course I ever took in college.  All my public policy professors at Duke stressed that the key to poverty alleviation was the strengthening of the health and education sectors, as well as the empowerment of women.  Of course, most parents instinctively know that a strong education and good health care provide many advantages for children who can get them, so maybe what I was learning was not all that profound.  So, with the obvious market demand for these things, I am a little surprised that we never talked about the private market application of these development ideas in school, unless we were having a conversation about how the private market created inequalities in society.

But, when talking to private sector folks like Will, I often get the impression that the private market is a place with the greatest ability to uplift underdeveloped societies.  In a virgin health industry landscape like China, partnerships between organizations like EtonKids and health care providers have a real chance to create models of education and health delivery that can later be replicated in the public sector.  If it was attempted the other way, the chances of a successful model being created would be slim since public money is limited and the first model built by an NGO is often the last model built.

When Will mentioned that an EtonKids center and a Beijing United clinic were almost attached to each other in a Shunyi center that I thought about what might happen if the two became truly attached.  Doesn’t a private clinic and a private school in one make a lot of sense?  This has to have already happened somewhere.

In any case, thank you Will for the interview.  If any private school parents out there are reading this, let us know what you think.