The school was initially founded to provide education for employees of the SMIC company. Since 2004, the school has been open for public
enrollment.
The school grew rapidly since its founding; the school had 75 students in the 1st year, and almost 700 students in its 4th year. The
school had its first English track graduating class of 7 in 2006. In
2009, the school had over 1800 students from 22 different countries. The
school is authorized and approved by The U.S. College Board as an
official SAT and AP testing center.
The school provides two academic tracks: an international division that uses an American curriculum with a Chinese requirement and a
Chinese track that is based on the local academic curriculum but with
strong English emphasis. The SMIC Private School is accredited by the
Pudong Board of Education and was awarded as an "Excellent Private
Elementary School and Middle/High School in China" in December 2009.
In 2018, the school was at the center of a major food safety scandal in which its cafeteria contractor Eurest, a subsidiary of Compass
Group, was found to have supplied expired and substandard food. During
an inspection of the cafeteria, visiting parents of students at the
school discovered moldy vegetables, expired seasoning, and food labeled
with a production date in the future. The incident was reported on
international media.
As a result of the incident, the school headmaster Zhu Ronglin and two other administrative staff members were dismissed and are currently
under investigation by government authorities. Following the incident,
Shanghai food safety authorities ordered an investigation of cafeterias
across the city. Expired items were also found at Concordia
International School Shanghai, whose supplier is also Eurest. As a
result of the investigation, the schools were ordered to cut ties with
Eurest.
In 2019, the school assigned a textbook to eighth grade students containing assignments for the winter break. Parents reported finding a
lewd short story in the textbook titled "Mommy's Washcloth" which
described a child seeing his father having extramarital oral sex with
their maid.[5] The publisher of the book has apologized and has fired
the editor of the textbook.[6] However, the school is still to be held
liable for failing to properly scrutinize the textbook which was not
government-approved. According to the Communist Party mouthpiece China
Daily, "[the] school will be severely punished for the sexually oriented
joke" by the education authority.
