The British International School Phuket is the largest international school on the island, and the most expensive. For most families arriving in Phuket it is the first name they hear. None of that is a recommendation — it is a reason to look at the school properly, with its own published numbers in front of you.
This is a review against stated criteria. It is not a ranking, and it is not an opinion piece. We have not taught at BISP, we do not have a child there, and we are not going to write as though we do. There are no parent quotes below, because we have no way to verify one. Everything here comes from the school's own published pages, from the Council of International Schools, or from our own rental book, and every figure carries a date.
We have written about all seven international schools on the island and what each charges. This is the closer look at the one at the top of that table.
The criteria
Nine things we can check without setting foot in a classroom, and what the school publishes against each.
| Criterion | BISP, as published |
|---|---|
| Curriculum | English National Curriculum to Key Stage 3; IGCSE in Years 10–11; IB Diploma or BTEC Level 3 in Years 12–13 |
| Accreditation | Re-accredited by CIS on 31 January 2025; IB World School; High School Diploma accredited by CIS, NEASC and the Thai Ministry of Education |
| Published outcomes | Yes — full IB and BTEC results announced each August |
| Fee transparency | Every year group priced separately, plus boarding, transport and English support |
| Cost of entry | ฿356,000 in year one on top of tuition, of which ฿206,000 is not refundable |
| Transport | ฿99,900 a year — a published figure, but no published routes |
| Language support | Intensive English course, ฿147,000 |
| Boarding | Weekly and full, from ฿396,400; 130 boarders |
| Scale | 44-acre campus, 1,130+ students aged 2–18, 55+ nationalities, founded 1996 |
What it actually teaches
Years 7 to 9 follow a modified English National Curriculum. Years 10 and 11 sit IGCSEs. At sixth form the school offers three routes: the full IB Diploma, a lighter programme of individual IB Courses for students who want fewer subjects, and BTEC International Level 3 Extended Diplomas in Sport and in Business. A BISP High School Diploma is awarded alongside those for students who meet the credit requirement.
BISP does not teach A Levels. This matters, because the assumption that a British school offers a British sixth form is a very easy one to make, and we made it ourselves — our own island-wide schools guide listed A Levels in BISP's curriculum column when it published on 22 August. That was wrong. The school's secondary and sixth-form pages list IGCSE, then IB and BTEC, and nothing else. We have corrected the earlier article. If you want A Levels in Phuket, HeadStart and BCIS are where to look.
Four sports academies — swimming, football, golf and tennis — run alongside the academic programme with their own coaching staff. The school is also an exam centre in its own right for the IB Diploma, IGCSE, SAT, PSAT, LAMDA, ABRSM and the Duke of Edinburgh's International Award, which is worth knowing if you have a child who would otherwise be flying to Bangkok to sit something.
What the results say — and what the internet says they say
BISP published its Class of 2026 results on 10 August 2026. A 97% IB Diploma pass rate against a global 81%. An average of 33 points against a global 30. A highest score of 44 out of 45. Bilingual diplomas for 22% of the cohort, and 72% of students at or above the world average. On the BTEC side, eight students, grades ranging from Triple Distinction* down to Distinction with Double Merit, and university places for all eight.
Now the caveat, and it is the reason we go to the school's own page every time. Search summaries and aggregator profiles currently report BISP's 2026 average as 34 points. The school's own announcement says 33. We have used 33. The same thing happened last year with a different pair of numbers, and it will happen again — school results get rounded up as they travel. If a figure matters to your decision, take it from the school's announcement and note the date, as we have.
One thing the school does not publish is the number of IB candidates. A 97% pass rate reads very differently across a cohort of thirty than a cohort of eight, and we cannot tell you which this is. Ask.
What it costs
BISP prices every year group separately, which is more than most schools on the island manage. The curve is not smooth — there is a step at Year 1, another at Year 7, and a small discount in the two public examination years.
| Year group | Annual tuition | Weekly boarding | Full boarding |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nursery, Reception | ฿489,000 | — | — |
| Years 1–3 | ฿750,000 | — | — |
| Year 4 | ฿755,900 | ฿396,400 | ฿473,550 |
| Year 5 | ฿758,300 | ฿396,400 | ฿473,550 |
| Year 6 | ฿767,700 | ฿396,400 | ฿473,550 |
| Years 7–8 | ฿977,900 | ฿457,800 | ฿509,300 |
| Years 9, 10, 12 | ฿982,700 | ฿457,800 | ฿509,300 |
| Years 11, 13 | ฿960,200 | ฿457,800 | ฿509,300 |
Boarding is charged on top of tuition, not instead of it. A Year 9 full boarder is therefore ฿1,492,000 a year before anything else.
Below Nursery there is Little Ducks, the pre-nursery, priced by attendance: ฿179,000 to ฿262,500 a year for mornings across three to five days, and ฿268,400 to ฿393,700 for full days. Lunch and snacks are inside that.
Fees are billed 40% in Term 1 and 30% in each of Terms 2 and 3 — except in Years 11 and 13, which are front-loaded at 50%, 35% and 15%. Break-time snacks, a buffet lunch, instrument access and compulsory educational visits are inside the tuition figure. Examination entry fees, sports trips, individual music lessons and uniform are not.
The bill in year one
Tuition is the number every comparison quotes. The one that catches people out is the cost of walking through the door, because it lands in the same month as the deposit on a house.
| Item | Amount | Recurring? |
|---|---|---|
| Tuition, Year 6 | ฿767,700 | Every year |
| Placement fee | ฿200,000 | Once, not refunded |
| Bond | ฿150,000 | Once, refunded on exit with fees cleared |
| School transport | ฿99,900 | Every year, optional |
| Application fee | ฿6,000 | Once, per application |
฿1,223,600 in the first twelve months, of which ฿150,000 comes back. The placement fee falls to a shared ฿250,000 if you are enrolling more than one child, which makes the second child materially cheaper to start than the first. If your child needs the intensive English course, add ฿147,000.
Where it sits, and what living there costs
The campus is at 59 Moo 2, Thepkrasattri Road, in Ko Kaeo — the stretch between Phuket Town and the airport road, not the west coast. That location is the most underrated thing about the school's economics.
On our own book today, the median asking rent for a three-bedroom house in Ko Kaeo is ฿85,000 a month, from 55 available priced listings. The same house in Bang Tao, on the west coast where much of the expatriate family market clusters, has a median of ฿150,000 from 341 listings. Over a year that gap is ฿780,000 — comfortably more than the difference in tuition between BISP and most of its competitors.
So the school with the highest fee on the island sits in one of its cheapest family-rental districts. If you are budgeting the whole move rather than just the invoice from the school, that is the calculation that matters. Our long-term rental listings and the district guides will show you what ฿85,000 buys in Ko Kaeo against what it buys on the west coast.
Two practical notes. The school publishes a transport fee of ฿99,900 but not its routes, so whether the bus reaches your street is a question for admissions, not for us. And the 2026/27 year began on Monday 24 August, with boarders returning the day before; Term 1 breaks from 10 to 18 October and closes from 12 December to 3 January.
What we could not find out
An honest review says where it ran out of road. Four things we wanted and could not get from a published source:
- The size of the IB cohort. Without it, the pass rate cannot be weighed properly.
- Bus routes and pick-up areas. Only the flat annual fee is published.
- The minimum boarding age, and whether flexi-boarding exists. The boarding pages describe house parents and a 24-hour nurse but no ages or capacity.
- A fee-increase policy. HeadStart publishes one. BISP does not, so next year's rise is unknown at the point you commit.
The verdict
BISP is the most transparent school on the island about money, and the most expensive. Those two facts are related: it publishes a full ladder of year-group fees, boarding rates, a bus figure and an English-support figure, and the sum of them is large. It has the deepest sixth-form provision in Phuket, real boarding, credible published results, current CIS accreditation and the only serious sports academies on the island. What it does not have is an A Level route, a published fee-increase policy, or any way for you to check the size of the cohort behind its headline pass rate.
It suits
- A family committed to an IB pathway, wanting the island's largest sixth form and a school that has done it for years.
- A serious young swimmer, footballer, golfer or tennis player — nowhere else in Phuket comes close on facilities or coaching.
- A family needing boarding, whether full or weekly. The only real alternative is UWC Thailand.
- Anyone whose total budget is the constraint rather than the tuition line. Ko Kaeo rent is the island's best-value family housing near a top-tier school.
It does not suit
- A child on a UK A Level track. That pathway does not exist here.
- A family that wants to live on the west coast. Bang Tao to Ko Kaeo at eight in the morning is not a commute you should sign up to without driving it first.
- A budget that cannot absorb a ฿206,000 non-refundable entry cost on top of the first year's fees.
If BISP is on your list, the rental decision follows the school decision — and in Ko Kaeo it is the cheaper half of the equation for once. Tell us the year group and the start date, and we will send you what is actually available within a sensible drive of the gate. Browse long-term rentals or talk to the desk.