A friend of mine is seeking a bilingual (English/Thai) preschool in Pattaya for his 4 year old son. Hopefully it will carry on into upper grades as well. Any specific details appreciated. Costs will be an important deciding factor in the selection.

Thanks for any help offered.

-redwood

A friend of mine is seeking a bilingual (English/Thai) preschool in Pattaya for his 4 year old son.  Hopefully it will carry on into upper grades as well.  Any specific details appreciated.  Costs will be an important deciding factor in the selection.

Thanks for any help offered.

-redwood

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Regents in Pattaya is about 80000+ baht per term

A friend of mine is seeking a bilingual (English/Thai) preschool in Pattaya for his 4 year old son.  Hopefully it will carry on into upper grades as well.  Any specific details appreciated.  Costs will be an important deciding factor in the selection.

Thanks for any help offered.

-redwood

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Are you looking for a local Thai school, where English is taught / spoken, or a genuine bi-lingual school?

There are several Thai schools (my daughter goes to Aksorn) which teach English from a young age. But there are few truly bilingual schools. Several claim to be 'International' schools and charge accordingly. But they are little different from the Thai schools.

If you want a truly International school, then regent's is about the only choice, in my opinion. But it is outside Pattaya, fifteen minutes drive from (say) Pattaya Klang in the traffic. And expensive.

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Are you looking for a local Thai school, where English is taught / spoken, or a genuine bi-lingual school?

There are several Thai schools (my daughter goes to Aksorn) which teach English from a young age. But there are few truly bilingual schools. Several claim to be 'International' schools and charge accordingly. But they are little different from the Thai schools.

If you want a truly International school, then regent's is about the only choice, in my opinion. But it is outside Pattaya, fifteen minutes drive from (say) Pattaya Klang in the traffic. And expensive.

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I think what he's working toward is an overview of exactly what's available here in Pattaya. He's not had the time to investigate the possibilities. The boy's Thai mother recently died and about the same time he was starting a new business, so he's really had his hands full, especially given the fact that there are no relatives nearby to help with child care and he doesn't want to leave the boy in the hands of baby sitters.

The cost of Regent's and probably the "international" schools is likely more than he can afford. I don't know if he's aware of the range of costs of various schools here or not, but I suppose he does have some inkling. From what you've said it would appear that a Thai school with good English language instruction is his best bet.

I'd appreciate any additional comments from either yourself or anyone else reading this. Send me a PM if you'd feel more comfortable doing that.

Thanks for your response.

-redwood

A friend of mine is seeking a bilingual (English/Thai) preschool in Pattaya for his 4 year old son.  Hopefully it will carry on into upper grades as well.  Any specific details appreciated.  Costs will be an important deciding factor in the selection.

Thanks for any help offered.

-redwood

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Regents in Pattaya is about 80000+ baht per term

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Fees are here:

http://www.regents.ac.th/regents/pattaya_fee.html

82,000 per term - so 246,000 baht a year, going up when they reach Primary...

Add in a 60,000 damage/loss deposit, a 3,000 application fee, and 5,500 per term for school lunches and you're talking about 325½K in the first year...

Add to that the cost of school uniforms (actually pretty reasonable) and the minibus if you don't want to drive the child to school yourself.

I'll admit they are expensive. However, the Regents is probably the best choice if there's a possibility of you going back to the UK at some point. They use the English curriculum, and all classes (except Thai) have native english teachers, mainly hired in the UK.

Have a look at this thread - long discussion about affordable international/bi-lingual schools.

Montisorri School, Soi Wong Amat. Not too expensive, small, nice setting.

I’ve done some quick research in this area in the past and at the International School level there are two main candidates in the Pattaya region—the Regent's and the International School Eastern Seaboard (ISE).

At international schools, most instruction is done in English compared to a combo Thai/English environment for bi-lingual schools. If you want the option of having your child attend school back in his/her home country, you need to highly consider an International School.

When looking for an international school you want to make sure they carry the International Baccalaureate Organization’s (IBO) accreditation, usually the IB Diploma program is preferred. I believe both Regent’s and ISE have accreditation.

The other main difference is the curriculum the school follows. ISE is an American school and has a curriculum based on an American style, but they claim to integrate the best of many different national curriculums…having visited them, most of their students are actually European, or Japanese. The Regents is UK based.

ISE is located on Burapha Golf Course and Regents is along highway 36. However most of the time students are picked up and dropped off by school mini vans.

Matt

Keep in mind that bi-lingual schools in the area cost around 40,000-60,000 per year while the International schools starts at around 200,000 for the cheapest, not including signup fees.

If your kid is smart and speak English at home I dare say they'd manage. Of course if you're Thai and there's no exposure to English outside school the situation is different.

There is also the Garden International school in Banchang, this is cheaper than any of the other international schools and runs on the english system but from what i see has a lot of thai kids there.