From Riverside to City: Shrewsbury Bangkok's Two-Campus Story

Shrewsbury International School Bangkok opened in 2003 on a 43-rai site along the Chao Phraya River in Bang Kho Laem, central Bangkok. The founder was Chali Sophonpanich, a Thai businessman and grandson of Bangkok Bank patriarch Chin Sophonpanich, who secured an affiliation with Shrewsbury School, the Royal Charter school founded in England in 1552. That connection was the school's defining premise from the start: a co-educational, English-language day school carrying the curriculum and ethos of one of Britain's oldest independent schools to Southeast Asia.

Origins and Early Leadership

Stuart Morris, previously headmaster at Harrow International School in Bangkok, was the school's first principal. He oversaw staff recruitment, curriculum implementation, and early enrolment growth, drawing more than 700 applications in the inaugural year. Morris was succeeded in 2005 by Stephen Holroyd, who had spent 20 years at Shrewsbury School in the UK, first as an English teacher. Holroyd led the school for 12 years, through 2017, a tenure that saw it grow from a promising newcomer into a recognised regional institution. Christopher Seal followed from 2017 to 2022. Robert Millar, who had worked his way up from assistant principal over 15 years at Riverside, took on the principal role in 2022 and leads the campus today.

Campus Growth and the City Campus

By 2016, demand had outgrown what the Riverside site could comfortably supply. The school announced plans to expand Riverside's capacity from 1,600 students to 2,300, a programme that would run in phases. The first significant move was underground: on Christmas Day 2017, construction began on a three-storey underground car park to free up surface space on the site.

In November 2017, Chali Sophonpanich announced a second, separate campus. A US$78 million investment was committed to a purpose-built primary school on a 2.4-hectare site between Sukhumvit and Rama IX roads, designed to hold 640 pupils. City Campus opened in August 2018, offering the English National Curriculum from Nursery through to Year 6. It was explicitly intended to absorb the waiting list that had built up at the riverside site, with families able to progress their children from City Campus into the Senior School at Riverside.

City Campus grew quickly. Enrolment rose from around 160 students in the 2018-19 academic year to over 540 by 2024-25, according to a PR Newswire announcement from the school. In November 2024, the campus opened an extended Early Years building, targeting 232 Early Years places per year. The Council of International Schools granted City Campus its own CIS accreditation in January 2024.

Project 2021: Rebuilding Riverside's Senior School

The most consequential capital project in the school's history concluded at Riverside in August 2021. The 1.1 billion Thai baht development, conceived under the name Project 2021, produced 17,000 square metres of new Senior School space. The centrepiece was the Sir David Lees Innovation Centre, named after the chairman of the school's board of governors. It houses 18 high-specification science laboratories across three floors, 16 mathematics classrooms, four computing suites, an innovation space, and a robotics lab. The Stephen Holroyd Sixth Form Commons, named for the long-serving second principal, sits at the top of the building with views over the Chao Phraya. A 700-seat air-conditioned dining hall and a Sports Performance Complex with new courts, a grass football pitch, and a strength-and-conditioning suite completed the build. The project was designed to increase the Senior School roll from 930 to 1,370 by 2026.

Curriculum, Accreditation, and Identity

Both campuses follow the English National Curriculum. At Riverside, students sit IGCSEs in Years 10 and 11, then A Levels in the Sixth Form, Years 12 and 13. The school is accredited by the Council for International Schools and by Thailand's Office for National Education Standards and Quality Assessment (ONESQA). It is a member of the Federation of British International Schools in Asia (FOBISIA) and of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference (HMC). Riverside was re-accredited by CIS in April 2019 and again in April 2025. The school's motto, drawn from its UK parent, is Intus Si Recte Ne Labora: "If the heart is right, all will be well."

The Early Years programme at both sites blends the UK's Early Years Foundation Stage with the Reggio Emilia approach, and all Early Years teachers hold Qualified Teacher Status from the United Kingdom. A Mandarin bilingual pathway, the Hanqing Bilingual Pathway, operates at City Campus, developing fluency in English and Mandarin alongside bicultural understanding.

UK ties are reinforced through a structured Gap Year programme, in which Shrewsbury School graduates travel to Bangkok to work in the kindergarten and in English, music, drama, and physical education departments at Riverside. The school has six houses and publishes an annual yearbook titled On the River.

Present Day

The Riverside campus enrolls almost 1,900 students aged 3 to 18 from 40 nationalities. Robert Millar leads Riverside; Amanda Dennison, who joined the Shrewsbury Bangkok community in 2010, is founding principal of City Campus. Graduates from the Class of 2026 secured places at Oxford, Stanford, Yale, Imperial College London, and University College London, among others. With CIS re-accreditation renewed at Riverside, a capacity-expanded City Campus, and a senior school facility built to accommodate further growth, the school's infrastructure is now aligned with an enrolment base its founders could not have anticipated when the first students arrived on the banks of the Chao Phraya in 2003.

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