Bangkok
Scotland's Glenalmond College Brings Its Brand to Phuket This August
Glenalmond Phuket International School will become the first overseas campus to carry the 178-year-old Scottish name, opening inside a sports resort with a distinctly hybrid curriculum.
Thailand's international school boom is claiming another UK independent brand this summer. Glenalmond Phuket International School will open its doors in August 2026, becoming the first school outside the United Kingdom to bear the Glenalmond name, according to Tes. The campus is purpose-built inside Thanyapura Sports and Health Resort in Phuket and will initially admit Early Years and Primary-aged pupils, following the English national curriculum from Foundation Stage through to the end of Key Stage 2.
The school is affiliated with Glenalmond College, the boarding school in Perthshire, Scotland, which has 178 years of history, as well as with Craigclowan School and Nursery, a prep school that merged with Glenalmond College in August 2024. Whether the Phuket campus will also open Key Stage 3 from day one remains an open question; the school has said there is "currently strong interest amongst the local community" to do so, and job adverts have invited applicants comfortable with secondary-level teaching.
A curriculum with a Singapore twist
The school's curriculum choices will catch the eye of parents familiar with the Singapore system. From Year 1, pupils will follow the Singapore Mathematics curriculum, which will continue through to Year 9 for older cohorts as provision expands. Mandarin Chinese is compulsory throughout, including in Early Years, and digital literacy covers coding, AI awareness, and robotics from the start. The combination of the English national curriculum, Singapore Mathematics, and compulsory Mandarin is unusual for a school carrying a traditional Scottish independent-school brand, and signals a deliberate pitch at both expatriate families and local Thai parents seeking a globally competitive education.
Facilities and the resort partnership
The Thanyapura partnership gives the school access to world-class sports and wellness facilities that few standalone primary schools in the region could match. Specialist rooms for digital literacy, science, art, drama, music, design technology, dance, and mindfulness are all built into the campus, alongside a lecture theatre and a 450-seat multi-purpose auditorium. The school's stated ambition is to make sport and mindfulness central to its identity, not an afterthought.
The opening comes as Phuket quietly establishes itself as a secondary market for British-curriculum schools beyond the Bangkok corridor. Glenalmond's arrival, together with the wave of UK independent-school brands entering Thailand this August, suggests investor confidence in the country's premium education market shows no sign of cooling heading into the 2026 to 2027 academic year.