EducationGuardian.co.uk, Lucy Ward

They are re-seeding the lawns at Sherfield School, and a journey down the sweeping drive reveals a scarecrow in a sports cap attempting to keep the birds from this particular patch of the school’s 75 Hampshire acres.

Meanwhile, inside the main school building efforts are focused on attracting pupils to join the new school’s opening roll in September. Though the blazer-wearing youngsters may not know it, they will also become part of an experiment in the schooling business which, its authors believe, could ultimately change the education landscape in Britain.

At first glance, Sherfield, with its heated pool, tennis courts and immaculate computer suites and language labs being buffed ready for opening, looks far from experimental. Yet this apparently traditional English independent school represents one face of a thrusting young newcomer causing ripples in the UK’s private education market – the Dubai-based Global Education Management Systems.

Gems, as the company is known, has eased its way into the UK by buying up cash-strapped existing schools – the Sherfield site closed as a girls’ boarding school last summer – but is better known overseas for offering a distinctive brand of no-frills, low-cost private education aimed at parents unable or reluctant to pay top-end fees for “country club” style facilities. In the Gulf states, some 40,000 mainly expatriate children are educated according to an English, American or Indian curriculum in 30 well-equipped but simply designed schools constructed to a standard Gems model. Built to be functional rather than luxurious, they are hardly basic, but might, for example, use one hall for assemblies and sports.

These “mid-market” and “mid-market plus” schools, backed up by “premium” establishments such as Sherfield, are the new alternatives Gems hopes will tempt UK parents dissatisfied with the options available in the state system, but priced out of a private sector where annual fees can easily reach £10,000 and above.

Here, priced at around £5,000 a year for the basic mid-market option, is education for the aspirational budget airline generation – a comparison Gems managers make before parents can. “The analogy is the plane flying to New York,” says Gems senior director John Bridger. “Some passengers have extra food and bigger seats, but there is no compromise on safety and everybody gets to the same destination. Similarly, whatever the model of school you can be sure of the same first class standards within the classroom.”

As yet, few Gems schools have taken off: only three, including Sherfield, are open, though the company last month picked up ten more sold off by the education services provider Nord Anglia for £11.9m. The expansion plans, though, are ambitious: Gems wants to build 20 of its model mid-market schools on greenfield sites, acquire another 25-30 schools and have 120 schools under its management within the next five years. It also has its eye on Germany and the ten new EU accession states, believing its offer can tempt disillusioned parents in new and old Europe.