International Schools in Chiang Mai: 2026/27 Fees Compared

This guide is for parents moving to Chiang Mai with school-age children. We found 21 international, foreign-curriculum and bilingual schools in the seven districts around the city; 20 publish a fee schedule on their own website, and we copied each one on 25 October 2026, with the school year it covers. Thai private and state schools follow for comparison: they are open to foreign children and cost far less, but teach the Thai curriculum on the Thai calendar. No school here is ranked, and every accreditation is the school's own statement.

Three kinds of school a foreign child can attend#

A foreign child in Chiang Mai can attend a Thai state school, a Thai private school or an international school. The first two teach the Thai national curriculum on the Thai school year, which starts on 16 May; an international school teaches a curriculum that is not the Ministry of Education's, in English, French or German, mostly from August. The price follows: no tuition at a state school, roughly ฿112,000–140,000 a year for a private English Program, and ฿251,000–530,400 a year for a six-year-old at an international school.

International schools here teach American, British, IB, German, French or Montessori curricula. To extend a student visa, a Thai private-school pupil also needs a certificate from the provincial governor or a department-level agency; state and international-school pupils need only the school's letter. A change to a student visa inside Thailand needs one more letter: from the Ministry of Education or the Educational Service Area Office for a state school below university level, or from the licensee for an international school. The line between a Thai private school's English Program and an international school is the curriculum, not the language. An English Program teaches the Thai national curriculum in English for at least 18 hours a week and keeps Thai language and Thai studies in Thai; an international school is licensed to teach "a curriculum that is not the Ministry of Education's", with Thai language and culture added. Labels such as IEP, EEP, STEP or "Bilingual" are a school's own: ask how many hours a week are taught in English.

International schools in Chiang Mai and their 2026/27 fees#

There are 21 international, foreign-curriculum and bilingual schools in the seven districts: 9 in Hang Dong, 6 in Mueang, 3 in Saraphi, and one each in Mae Rim, Doi Saket and San Kamphaeng. Twenty publish fees, 17 of them as current 2026/27 schedules for their own campus. Tuition runs from ฿126,000 a year, a kindergarten's preschool class, to ฿814,000 for Grades 9–12 at Prem.

Only two schools publish boarding: Prem (weekly or full) and APIS (Grades 5–12). WASC is the accreditation claimed most often; Prem alone shows CIS and NEASC, and SISB, Mill Hill and BCIS make no claim on the pages we read. Every claim is the school's own; we could not check it against the accreditors' lists.

What tuition includes differs enough to distort a comparison. Panyaden includes books, lunch and snacks, accident insurance and most trips. SBS includes lunch, a snack, visa documents, accident insurance and a yearly medical check-up, but not textbooks or exam fees. NIS includes accident insurance and meals from K1 to Grade 5, and Lanna includes its IGCSE and A/AS exam fees. SISB adds an educational resources fee of ฿28,500–80,000 a year, and Grace a capitalization fee of ฿30,000 a year for every pupil.

English support is the largest optional line for a child who is not yet fluent: ฿40,000 a year at Lanna and ACIS, ฿50,000 at BCIS, ฿60,000 at VCIS, ฿70,000 at Meritton and ฿80,000 at UCIS; SBS, SISB, Prem, Panyaden and Chiang Mai Montessori charge it per term. CDSC asks children who do not speak German to take a paid German course. Most schools take 5–10% off for a second child and 10–20% for a third; Prem goes furthest, with 50% off for a fifth child, and charges its ฿130,000 foundation fee only for the first two.

Directory sites, and Google's AI answer that quotes them, did not match the schools' own pages on 25 October 2026: they showed CMIS ฿10,000 higher in every grade from Kindergarten up, the size of CMIS's yearly capital improvement fee. Use each school's own schedule, linked in the sources below.

What a first year costs for a six-year-old#

A six-year-old's published 2026/27 tuition runs from ฿251,000 a year at CDSC to ฿530,400 at Lanna, before entry charges. One-time entry charges add ฿50,000 to ฿160,000 in the first year, most of it non-refundable, and they weigh most at the cheaper schools. Compare first-year totals, not tuition lines.

Three first years for a six-year-old, all charges in, before lunch, bus and English support (our sums from each school's 2026/27 schedule): BCIS comes to ฿389,900 (tuition ฿254,100, entry ฿103,300 and ฿32,500 of yearly capital, activities, insurance, uniform, stationery and yearbook charges); CMIS to ฿549,800 (tuition ฿426,800, entry ฿112,000, capital improvement ฿10,000 and PTG ฿1,000); Lanna to ฿639,400 (tuition ฿530,400, entry ฿96,000, capital ฿10,000, PTO ฿1,000 and accident insurance ฿2,000). Lanna's tuition is 2.1 times BCIS's; its first year is 1.6 times.

Cut-off birthdays differ, so a child with a late-summer birthday can land in different classes at different schools: 1 August at CMIS and SBS, 31 August at APIS, 1 September at Lanna and SISB. Grace places by birthdate strictly.

Thai private schools with an English Program#

Thai private schools in Chiang Mai admit foreign children and teach the Thai national curriculum, in Thai or in an English Program, on the Thai school year from 16 May. A full primary English Program costs about ฿112,000–140,000 a year in tuition, roughly half of the cheapest international school, and Prince Royal's all-English stream costs about the same as that school.

With entry fees, books and other charges, a P.1 first year comes to ฿85,600 in Montfort's Bilingual stream, ฿152,800 in its English Program, ฿160,800 in Varee's primary English Program and ฿252,300 in Prince Royal's STEP (our sums from the schools' notices). Varee's English page adds a surcharge for non-Thai pupils of ฿6,000 a semester in kindergarten and primary, ฿8,000 in lower secondary and ฿8,300 in upper secondary; its Thai page does not carry that line. Varee tests P.1 applicants in basic Thai, mathematics and English and caps classes at 35.

Only "EP" (at least 18 hours a week in English) and "MEP" (at least 12) are defined by the Ministry; IEP, EEP, STEP and "Bilingual" are the schools' own names. Unlike a state school's, a private English Program has no official fee cap. Dara Academy lists passport copies "for foreigners only" among its admission documents but publishes no tuition; Montfort's secondary section and Regina Coeli publish no current fees.

Thai state schools#

Thai state schools may admit foreign children: a Cabinet resolution of 5 July 2005 opened basic education to children without Thai nationality, and a pupil without a Thai ID receives a "G-Code" student number. They may not charge tuition, but they may charge approved, nominally voluntary fees for anything beyond the core curriculum. Teaching is in Thai; English-medium classes are selective English Programs, mostly in secondary.

• A Ministry announcement of 20 October 2011, still in force, lists 22 items a state school may not charge for, among them tuition, textbooks, learning equipment, uniforms, one academic activity and one field trip a year.
• Extras need the school board's and the area office's approval and must be printed in the admission notice. An English Program may charge at most ฿35,000 a semester up to M.3 and ฿40,000 from M.4; a Mini English Program ฿17,500 and ฿20,000. Lunch, insurance and air-conditioning are charged at cost.
• One example, Yupparaj Wittayalai's M.4 notice for 2025/26: ฿5,230 a term in a regular class and ฿35,230 in its English Program. That figure is for M.4 in that year only.
• Chiang Mai University's demonstration school (Satit CMU) quotes about ฿16,000–20,000 a term for its standard class and ฿35,000–38,000 for its Intensive English Programme for the 2027/28 M.1 intake. That programme is taught in Thai with more English hours; it is not an English Program.

At kindergarten and P.1, general places go by catchment with no academic test; from M.1, and in any English Program, admission goes through a test in Thai-curriculum subjects, with a Thai paper. Applications run from February to early April, so a family arriving in July or August has missed them and must ask for a mid-year place. The one state-school application form we read asks for a Thai ID or student card and a house registration; no official list of documents for a foreign child was found, so ask the school.

Admission and the school year#

International schools in Chiang Mai start their year in August (10 August 2026 at NIS and Panyaden) and Mill Hill in September; Thai schools start on 16 May. Every international school asks for the child's passport and birth certificate, previous school reports and an assessment with an interview, and several keep waiting lists.

• CMIS takes applications for 2027–28 from 1 November 2026 to 15 January 2027, assesses from February and says Grades 2–12 are at capacity, with a waiting list.
• Lanna calls itself selective and tests by age, from play-based observation in Early Years to about three hours from Year 4.
• Prem enrols year-round and decides within 3–5 business days of the interview and assessment; Meritton offers a place within 1–3 working days of its placement test.
• Waiting lists are explicit at CMIS, Grace, Panyaden (with a ฿30,000 waiting-list deposit), Chiang Mai Montessori, SISB, Mill Hill and Hana Christian Kindergarten.
• Thailand has no rule making vaccination a condition of school entry; CMIS, Panyaden and Meritton ask for an immunisation record.

Visas for children and parents#

Your child's visa usually follows yours. Under Immigration Bureau Order 12/2568, in force since 23 January 2025, an unmarried child under 20 who lives with you extends as your dependant for ฿1,900, with no separate money test. A parent who stays only to look after a pupil uses the guardian clause and needs at least ฿500,000 in a Thai bank in their own name.

The guardian route is a chain: the child first holds a student extension, then a parent may stay up to a year at a time, each parent showing their own ฿500,000 in a Thai bank, held for 30 days before the first application and for 3 months before later ones. The order says nothing about whether a guardian may work, so ask before you plan on it. At 20 a child leaves every dependant route except through illness or disability, which matters for a student finishing Grade 12 or Year 13 at 19.

Schools charge for the visa paperwork: ฿5,000 a person at UCIS, ACIS, ABA and Chiang Mai Montessori, ฿5,000 plus ฿1,500 postage at BCIS; SBS includes it in tuition, and Hana Christian Kindergarten asks for a full year's tuition before it processes visas. Children file 90-day reports like adults, and a parent can file for the household online; a late report costs ฿2,000 (up to ฿5,000 plus ฿200 a day if caught without having reported). A bill that would change the 90-day report passed the House on 30 September 2026 and is not law yet. Since 15 September 2026, visa-exempt arrivals get 30 days, for tourism only, not 60, which shortens the time a family has to change status.

Chiang Mai Immigration Office

Where extensions and 90-day reports are made, its counters, hours and the ฿1,900 fee.

Read the immigration office guide

Where families live near the schools#

Nine of the 21 schools are in Hang Dong, where a house in a housing estate starts at about ฿20,000 a month (21 estates, asking rents read in August 2026), below the ฿22,000 typical start across the Chiang Mai market. Near Prem in Mae Rim, houses start at about ฿29,000; in Mae Hia, townhouses start at about ฿17,000.

Each figure is an estate's cheapest home, so a family needing three or more bedrooms will usually pay more, and our data cannot say how much. Running a house on its own meters adds about ฿2,300–3,000 a month for electricity and water on the current tariffs (our calculation for 500–600 units of electricity and 15–25 cubic metres of water).

Other family costs#

Beyond tuition, three lines move a family budget most: lunch and the school bus, about ฿50,000–85,000 a year per child where billed separately; English support, ฿40,000–80,000 a year; and health insurance, which every insurer prices per child, a child under five costing about twice as much as a parent of 40.

• Insurance: no insurer we read sells a family plan. At Bangkok Insurance, Plan 1 costs ฿53,810 a year for a child up to 5 against ฿26,260 for an adult of 36–40; Dhipaya's Plan 1 costs ฿88,000 for a child under five. Chubb's high-deductible Premium plan has one band for ages 1–17, from ฿12,700 to ฿23,700 a year.
• Hospitals: no Chiang Mai hospital publishes a paediatrician's fee; the child packages include it. Bangkok Hospital Chiang Mai sells an under-15 check-up at ฿2,400 (sale price to 30 November 2026) and a children's flu shot at ฿890.
• Nursery: Lemur Lion Lamb in San Sai charges ฿9,000 a month for two days a week up to ฿15,000 for five; CDSC's kindergarten costs ฿146,000–168,000 a year.
• Help at home: the minimum wage is ฿380 a day in Mueang Chiang Mai and ฿357 elsewhere in the province; on 26 days that is the floor in the table, not a market rate.
• Summer schools, 2026 prices for planning 2027: Lanna's summer school took children visiting from abroad, ages 5–14, at ฿32,000 per two-week session; Panyaden's camp cost ฿53,500 for three weeks; UCIS and BCIS charge ฿10,000 a week. No school offers short term-time places in regular classes.

Cost of living in Chiang Mai

Rents by area, bills, food, transport and health insurance, every line with its source.

Read the cost-of-living guide