Ho Chi Minh City · History
From a District 1 Villa to Vietnam's Largest International School
The British International School Ho Chi Minh City began in August 1997 as a two-class pre-school with 40 toddlers. Nearly three decades on, it enrolls 2,300 students across three purpose-built campuses.
Maurice Nguyen and Rosie Ngo had lived and studied overseas, returned to Vietnam to raise their family, and found that no British-style school existed in the city. So they built one themselves. In August 1997 they opened their doors in a renovated villa in District 1, investing their time, energy, and savings into a British-style education centre for their daughter, Jenny. The school opened under the name Tiny Tots. It started with just two classes, two teachers from overseas, and 40 toddlers.
Origins
The school quickly became the most sought-after pre-school in Ho Chi Minh City, for both international and Vietnamese families. Building on that success, a second pre-school named Fundino was established in District 3. Demand kept growing. The original Tiny Tots villa was extended in 2000 to accommodate ten additional primary classrooms, bringing the total student count to 300. That year the school was officially renamed the British International School, with Marjorie Hunt serving as its first head teacher.
Growth and Campus Expansion
Two years later, a new primary campus was built in the residential An Phu area of the city. With three campuses now operating, Alun Thomas was appointed Principal and enrolment reached 600 children. The school's ambitions for secondary education followed quickly. In August 2005, a purpose-built secondary campus opened on land close to the An Phu primary site. In 2006, the first sixth-form graduates went on to study at university.
The founders tasked principal Shaun Williams to create a dual-language curriculum school for Vietnamese families where English was not their primary language. The result was the first British Vietnamese International School, which opened in the Binh Chanh District of Ho Chi Minh City in August 2011 with approximately 350 students on roll. By 2012, the network had reached Hanoi, and BIS Hanoi opened with Anthony Rowlands as its founding principal.
In March 2015, BIS HCMC joined the Nord Anglia Education family. Nord Anglia Education, at the time listed on the New York Stock Exchange, acquired the British International Schools Group Vietnam, which comprised four premium schools, with BIS Ho Chi Minh City as the flagship. The deal brought access to world-leading education technology, award-winning teacher training programmes, and exclusive collaborations with The Juilliard School, MIT, and UNICEF.
In January 2018, BIS opened a new Early Years and Infant Campus, bringing all members of the community into one geographic area for the first time. In the same year that the new campus opened, Jenny Nguyen, the school's original inspiration, graduated from New York University.
Anthony Rowlands served as principal of BIS HCMC from 2017, having first joined the group in 2012 as founding principal of BIS Hanoi. In February 2023, the school marked its 25th anniversary by renaming its auditorium the Founders Auditorium in honour of Maurice and Rosie. The unveiling was attended by the school's co-founders, Lord David Puttnam as Chair of the Nord Anglia Education Advisory Board, and Emily Hamblin, the UK Consul General in Vietnam. Rowlands retired at the end of the 2024-25 academic year.
Curriculum and Accreditation
Students follow the English National Curriculum through Key Stage 3, move into the Cambridge IGCSE programme in Years 10 and 11, and complete their studies in Years 12 and 13 with the IB Diploma Programme. BIS HCMC is fully accredited by the Council of International Schools (CIS), is a registered centre for Cambridge International Examinations, is a designated IB World School, is recognised by the UK government as an overseas school, and is a full participating member of the Federation of British International Schools in Asia (FOBISIA). The school was rated outstanding in its 2016 and 2019 British Schools Overseas inspections.
As a Nord Anglia school, BIS HCMC works in collaboration with The Juilliard School on its music programme and draws on the group's STEAM focus in partnership with MIT. The school was also the founding institution of SAIMUN, the Ho Chi Minh City Model United Nations conference, established in 2009 and the only MUN conference held in Vietnam.
Present Day
BIS HCMC now operates as a single community across three purpose-built campuses in the Thao Dien area of Ho Chi Minh City. The Early Years and Infant Campus is at 101 Thao Dien Street, the Junior Campus at 225 Nguyen Van Huong Street, and the Secondary Campus at 246 Nguyen Van Huong Street. The student body has grown to over 2,300 students from 56 nationalities, a stark contrast to the renovated villa with 60 students in 1997.
In 2025, the school's largest-ever IGCSE cohort of 155 students achieved 97% of grades at A*-C, with 69% at A* or A. IBDP students that year averaged 36.3 points against a global average of 30.58, with more than a quarter of the cohort scoring 40 or above and one student achieving a perfect 45.
Simon Higham joined BIS HCMC as Principal in August 2025, beginning his tenth year connected to the school. He spent seven years as principal of sister school BVIS HCMC and first worked at BIS from 2009 to 2018, serving as primary deputy headteacher and then primary headteacher. The school he now leads bears almost no resemblance to the small villa on Nguyen Van Thu Street where Maurice and Rosie Nguyen started it all for a girl named Jenny.
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