Grace International School (GIS).

The campus, and how you actually get there

A 37-acre campus in Hang Dong — one of the larger school sites in the province, with the room for sports fields and the boarding-style community facilities its mission implies.

Getting there: No urban rail. Grace sits in Hang Dong, south of the city — typically 20–30 minutes from the Old City and quicker from Mae Hia, Saraphi or the Canal Road corridor, longer from Mae Rim or San Sai in the north. The southern suburbs are the sensible place to live for this run, and the Hang Dong corridor has the condo and house supply to make that easy.

Chiang Mai has no urban rail — no BTS, no MRT, no commuter metro. The city's railway station serves intercity trains to Bangkok, and the long-discussed Chiang Mai light-rail scheme remains unbuilt, so every school run here is a car, a motorbike, a red songthaew, a Grab or the school bus. Read the Chiang Mai getting-around guide and the Chiang Mai area guides before you commit to a neighbourhood.

Smoke-season air quality at this campus

Grace International School (GIS) does not publish detailed smoke-season filtration information that we could verify from primary sources, so we are not going to imply provision that may not exist. That is not a criticism of the school — most Chiang Mai schools handle this well and simply do not document it publicly — but it does mean you must ask directly. The due-diligence list below tells you exactly what to ask.

Northern Thailand's burning season runs roughly February to April, when agricultural burning and forest fires push Chiang Mai high into the global air-quality rankings — IQAir placed the city among the ten most polluted in the world on 4 March 2026, with AQI above 150 and PM2.5 the dominant pollutant. For a family with young children this is a legitimate school-selection criterion, not a footnote. Our Chiang Mai air-quality guide covers the season in full.

The curriculum pathway

How a child progresses through the school, stage by stage:

• Elementary — American curriculum from Kindergarten, taught from a biblical worldview
• Middle school
• High school — Grades 9–12, American diploma pathway

Accreditation & memberships

Accreditation is the closest thing to an objective quality signal in international schooling — it means an outside body has inspected governance, teaching and safeguarding. BAANLYY does not rank schools, so this is what Grace International School (GIS) and its accrediting bodies publish, not our verdict:

• Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI)
• Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC)

Boarding and the size of the school

Scale: Over 500 students, drawn from families serving with more than 85 organisations across 40-plus countries — an unusually mission-focused community even by the standards of Chiang Mai's faith-based schools. Roll and nationality figures move every year and schools report them differently — treat these as indicative and ask the admissions office for the current numbers.

Who this school tends to suit

Its stated purpose is the education of the children of international Christian workers, and the community reflects that. Families outside that world should look closely at whether the biblical-worldview curriculum and the community's centre of gravity are what they want; families inside it will find the deepest such network in northern Thailand.

This is our editorial read for relocation planning, not a ranking or a recommendation — and no school pays to appear on BAANLYY. Visit shortlisted campuses before you decide.

Living near Grace International School (GIS)

The southern corridor is the natural catchment. The BAANLYY area guides for this run:

Check the school's bus catchment before you sign. Chiang Mai's international schools cluster in two distinct belts — the northern one around Mae Rim and San Sai, and the far larger southern one through Hang Dong, Mae Hia and Saraphi — and picking a home in the wrong belt turns a fifteen-minute run into a daily hour.

What to confirm directly with the school

BAANLYY deliberately does not publish per-school tuition figures: they change annually, schools publish their own current schedules, and a stale number is worse than none. Take this list to the admissions office:

• Admissions eligibility. Grace exists to serve the children of Christian workers, and admissions priority, pricing and requirements can differ substantially for families outside that group — establish where you stand before you plan around it.
• Smoke-season filtration across a 37-acre campus — ask which buildings are sealed and filtered and what the outdoor-sport policy is during the February–April burning season.
• The current fee schedule — tuition, application and registration fees, any refundable deposit or capital/development levy, uniforms, lunches, the bus and trips.
• Whether the year group you need has a place, or a waitlist, for your intended start date.
• Smoke-season provision in detail: which buildings are filtered, whether the sports halls and canteen are included as well as classrooms, whether indoor and outdoor AQI readings are published to parents, and the school's written policy for cancelling outdoor activities. This is the single most important Chiang Mai-specific question a family can ask, and provision varies enormously between campuses.
• School bus routes, catchment zones and pick-up times for the specific neighbourhood you are considering — several Chiang Mai schools sit well outside the ring roads, and a home ten minutes further out but on the route can be the easier morning.
• Entry requirements: assessments, interviews, English-language support and the school reports or transcripts you must supply.
• How far the school takes your child, and on which exam pathway — Chiang Mai mixes American/AP, Cambridge IGCSE and A-level, and IB Diploma routes, and switching between them mid-secondary is disruptive.

Visit the official Grace International School (GIS) website →

Sources & References

• Ministry of Education, Thailand

Primary and official sources are cited above. Government rules, fees and procedures in Thailand change over time and vary by office; always confirm current requirements with the relevant authority before relying on them. BAANLYY never takes paid placement in editorial content.