From eleven students to 2,300: St Andrews Bangkok at 28

St Andrews International School Bangkok opened in 1997 on a plot off Sukhumvit Soi 71, in what was then a relatively quiet residential pocket of Bangkok's Watthana district. The founding ambition was straightforward: deliver a British-style education to the city's growing expatriate population, from nursery through to the sixth form, on a single campus.

Origins

The school started small. When Paul Schofield arrived in 2003, he joined a school with just eleven students and was teaching Year 8 with a class of four. Schofield had previously been the founding head of Bangkok Patana School's high school. He stayed, and eventually became head of St Andrews, a post he still holds. That continuity of leadership is unusual in international schools; his senior management team has, by his own account, worked together for the better part of fifteen years.

The Sukhumvit 71 campus grew steadily through the 2000s into an all-through school, taking children from Foundation Stage 1 at age two all the way to Year 13. Teaching has always been in English, with Thai language mandatory to Year 9 under Thai Ministry of Education rules, and a global languages programme running from Key Stage 1 upward.

Nord Anglia and the second campus

The school's most significant structural change came in 2012, when St Andrews joined Nord Anglia Education's global network. That brought institutional resources — collaborations with MIT, the Juilliard School, and UNICEF; a Global Campus digital platform linking students across Nord Anglia's schools worldwide — and confirmed the school's place within a premium international group. As WhichSchoolAdvisor noted, the transition also brought formal access to Nord Anglia's track record of IBDP results, where historically around 15 percent of students score 40 points or above, more than double the global average.

Five years after joining Nord Anglia, the school split its two sections across two sites. In August 2017, a purpose-built high school campus opened on Sukhumvit Road near the Ekkamai BTS station. The move freed the original Sukhumvit 71 site to operate as a dedicated primary school, redesigned specifically for children aged two to eleven. The high school campus, developed from a former Thai private school site, opened with new STEAM labs, a professional theatre, a fitness and yoga centre, and a dedicated IB learner centre. At the same time, the primary campus launched a new STEAM curriculum and upgraded sports, arts, and language facilities.

Curriculum and identity

The curriculum follows the English National Curriculum from Early Years Foundation Stage through to the end of Key Stage 3. In Years 10 and 11, students sit IGCSEs — the school is an accredited examination centre for both Edexcel and Cambridge International — before moving into a Senior Studies programme in Years 12 and 13, where they choose between the IB Diploma Programme, the IB Career-related Programme, and BTEC pathways. The school holds IB World School status.

Admissions are non-selective. The school has built its identity explicitly around inclusion, welcoming students of all abilities and providing individual education plans for those with additional learning needs. It was the first school outside the United Kingdom to be awarded the Inclusion Quality Mark with Centre of Excellence status. That accreditation was reconfirmed in 2026, when the school hosted the IQM Thailand event in May.

External inspection has consistently rated the school highly. British Schools Overseas reports have judged the quality of education outstanding across both primary and high school. That standard is validated by the Education Development Trust's International Schools Quality Mark at Gold level. The school also holds accreditation from the Council of International Schools and is a member of FOBISIA, ISAT, and ONESQA — the Thai Ministry of Education's quality assessment body, which ensures graduates qualify for Thai university entry.

Results bear out the inspection judgements. More than 80 percent of IGCSE students have achieved at least five A* to C grades, with 36 percent of all grades at A* or A. In the IB Diploma, the school's average score has sat at 34 points, four points above the global average, with multiple students reaching 40 points or above each year.

Present day

St Andrews Bangkok now enrols around 2,300 students across its two campuses, drawn from more than 60 nationalities, with Thai nationals forming the largest single group followed by Japanese students. The primary campus on Soi Pridi Banomyong 20/1 serves approximately 1,100 children aged two to eleven. The high school at 1020 Sukhumvit Road takes the remaining students from Year 7 through Year 13. Both campuses sit within a ten-minute drive of each other in central Bangkok, and the school runs a shuttle service between them and the Ekkamai BTS station. Nord Anglia now operates three schools in Thailand following its acquisition of Regent's International School Bangkok in late 2025, with St Andrews remaining the network's flagship Bangkok campus.

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