School Fees.

[scottie]

Hi all, thoroughly enjoyed this forum since I found it a few days back.

My first posting concerns school fees, can you give me an idea of what school fees are for one of the international schools.

Need to do a bit of research as hopefully relocating to Chiang mai next year.

Thanks in advance.

[p1p]

International school fees are dependant on the age of your child. Prem Centre is almost certainly the most expensive and their fees range from 154,000 per annum for the Kindergarden up to 300,000 or so p/a for grades 9 to 12. The other schools range from half this amount up to a similar figure. (Most schools charge a registration fee for new students joining the school. Prem currently charges 125,000 Baht.)

There is a fair amount of choice in international schooling in CM. Several schools have been set up to teach missionary's children. Others teach in German or Japanese, one offers English curricula and Prem offers the IB.

[Dutchy]

International school fees are dependant on the age of your child. Prem Centre is almost certainly the most expensive and their fees range from 154,000 per annum for the Kindergarden up to 300,000 or so p/a for grades 9 to 12. The other schools range from half this amount up to a similar figure. (Most schools charge a registration fee for new students joining the school. Prem currently charges 1125,000 Baht.)

There is a fair amount of choice in international schooling in CM. Several schools have been set up to teach missionary's children. Others teach in German or Japanese, one offers English curricula and Prem offers the IB.

I'm not sure if you're on track with your tuition fees in Chiang Mai. Prem is a top school in Thailand and will probably charge more. The schools I know all charge between 400,000 and roughly one million for the first year. You can also send your kids to a crappy bilingual school, schools with holidays in april/may and october. You;'ll pay up to 100,000 for that but get les quality.

Dutchy

I would personally recommend Prem in Chiang Mai, it's the number one up north

[p1p]

I'm not sure if you're on track with your tuition fees in Chiang Mai. Prem is a top school in Thailand and will probably charge more. The schools I know all charge between 400,000 and roughly one million for the first year. You can also send your kids to a crappy bilingual school, schools with holidays in april/may and october. You;'ll pay up to 100,000 for that but get les quality.

Dutchy

I would personally recommend Prem in Chiang Mai, it's the number one up north

I'm afraid I was absolutely correct in Prem's fees. I was reading them from the fee schedule given to me yesterday at the school when I applied for my two youngest children to go there from August.

I also totally agree with your assessment of Prem as the number one up north. In the past copuple of months I have visited Lanna, CMIS, Nakorn Ping, Grace, APIS and others as well as Prem. The Prem centre bowled me over and, in terms of facilities and percieved quality, is so far beyond the others as to be almost on another planet.

[scottie]

Thanks for that.

Wow that's a whopper of a joining fee !!

I guess yearly fees are as I hoped.

Last year I was looking at a new housing development on the super highway (name escapes me for now), with a smart looking school opposite, any idea which school that mighthave been ?

Cheers.

[lamphun]

NIS

2 terms a year. Currently 75,000 a term. There's a joining fee of about 50,000 baht.

P1P

I'd be interested to know why you think Prem is so much better. I assume you're not linking fees with quality.

Teaching standards are the most important thing. Any comments ??

[p1p]

Lampun

Teaching standards are, as you say, highly important. But the facilities must be up to scratch to take advantage of the teachers' abilities.

If you were to visit the Prem Center and have a look at the teachers in action in their classroms, you will be unable to be unimpressed. They are all professional educators, not just teachers, mostly with years of experience in international schools from around the world. This is why the Prem Center is only the third school in Thailand to have been granted full IB PYP certification in addition to their current status as an IB World School. They will soon be the only school in Thailand with full IB K-12 certification.

Regarding teachers' abilities, if I may quote from a recent letter to parents from the head of the school: " The recruitment of teachers and also interns is well under way and I spent much of three weeks in February interviewing in London, Boston and Toronto." To the best of my knowledge, Prem is the only school in the North of Thailand to make such efforts, rather than making do with teachers available in Thailand. If you read through the teacher profile sheet it is notable that most of the original teachers from the school's opening are still there. You will also note that almost all teaching staff have Masters level qualification at minimum.

Lastly, if any student wishes to join Prem in the middle or senior years, the minimum entry requirement is a GPA of 3.0 or above and they must then pass the entry tests etc.

Prem is expensive and is quite a long way out of town, but I firmly believe that the only thing of true value I can give my children is their education. I was fortunate to go through the British private boarding school system and Cambridge University. I wish to try to give my children the opportunities I had, but failed to fully make use of. I know the next fifteen years are going to be a major struggle, because I do not really have the money, but I owe it to my family to set them up for their lives and Prem is therefore the only choice I can see as being viable for them.

[lamphun]

P1P

I agree with mostly with your views and I'm not going to criticize the teaching standards at Prem as I'm sure they're probably fairly high. I did check Prem out a few years back, shortly after it had re-invented itself from the original Tridos. The campus is impressive, but at that time seemed largely uninhabited due to the low student numbers. I also felt that the students would need bicycles to get between different classes because the buildings were so far apart.

We chose not to send our kids there for the same reason we chose not to live in Bangkok. We didn't want them sitting in buses all day. I'm fairly happy with the education they're recieving at NIS, so I think we made the correct choice. The much lower fees don't hurt, but they're not the main factor.

[p1p]

Please note I've edited the Foundation fee above. It stands at 125,000 Baht. My previous typo put it at over a million!

Apologies for confusion caused.

[lamphun]

Can you drop your fees a bit more. I assume youre the vice principal.

[scottie]

I'll second that Lamphun...........Nearly messed myself about the original joining fee.

Good stuff, many thanks.

[lopburi3]

From their website this is link to the current fee schedule for Prem:

Fees

[scottie]

Many thanks for the link, Lopburi3.

Great help.

[Surfing Spleen]

Does NIS have a website?

Aloha,

Spleen

[lissy]

NIS's website is

http://nis.ac.th/