Schooling in Thailand

Schooling in Thailand
By Sean Fowler (Magazine Issue 12 Jan/Mar 2010)

Making sure your kids get a decent start in life and to increase their chances of getting better opportunities in the future is all about getting, at the very least, a reasonable education. In Thailand, that seems to be truer than anywhere else in the world that I know of, especially if you would like to see them progress into a decent working environment with a regular salary when they get older. Yes, I am one of those people.

I have heard all sorts of horror stories from Western parents who have had to relocate to Thailand for work or whatever. And in the process they have had to uproot their children from their apparently, ‘great’ & ‘faultless’ Western education system and bought them to Thailand, for what they think is 100 times worse than they were getting back in their home country.

From what I have seen, experienced and learnt from my own three young children here in Thailand whom were all born, bred and educated in Western Europe up until around this time last year. Something else worth nothing is the fact they were non Thai speakers at the time, now obviously that has changed.

First off, I checked out the availability of private schools in and around the areas of Udon and Nong Khai, listed them all and set about checking them all out, one by one, by booking appointments with whoever the schools principle was and requesting to spend some time watching the kids being taught in class.

Surprisingly some of the bigger private schools I went to view, were very disappointing, with classes way too large, 40+ kids, poor quality of teaching (in my opinion) and in sub standard buildings, not that this should be something to deter my decision of course.
Others in the cities of Udon Thani and Nong Khai were ok, but still not quite where I would like to see them, also they were pretty expensive, even by Thai standards.

As time went on I was getting more and more disillusioned by the quality of the schools I had been to see, and was beginning to have second thoughts about the whole event.

Strangely enough, I bumped into some guy from the United Kingdom shopping in Big C in Udon Thani. He lived out in the sticks and just came into town every so often to top up on a few bits and pieces. We had a chat and a coffee and before you could say thank you, he found the solution to my problem, although I did not know it at that point.

He recommended me coming up to visit him to see a local school (I’m not naming it without their permission) in Sri Chiang Mai, Nong Khai province.
I agreed and he arranged an appointment for me to view the school a couple of days later.

I arrived at the school, this time with my children, as per the request of the principal of the school, so the decision wasn’t just left down to me this time.

We had a look around the school, newish building, air con (a rare sight indeed) in the class rooms, Western teacher with a REAL teaching degree from the UK, smallish classes (around 20-25 on average), other teachers all with a good understanding of the English language(which all seemed to run a very good English language program there) and a real homely atmosphere to the place.

The annual fee was also a surprise, and was way more reasonable than most of the city school I had been to see. Ah, another added bonus, well for my kids anyway, was the swimming pools, yes pools, there are 2.

So this was the school that I finally decided to let my children run wild in, and I can tell you, I have never looked back.

Research and homework is all it takes to find what you are looking for!