Unity Concord International School (UCIS).

The campus, and how you actually get there

Address: 272 Moo 2, Chiang Mai–Lampang Super Highway, Nong Pheung, Saraphi, Chiang Mai 50140

A purpose-built campus opened in 2017 — the newest of the schools profiled here — with a house system, athletics programme and the STREAM and co-curricular provision the school sets out under its academics pages.

Getting there: No urban rail. UCIS sits on the Chiang Mai–Lampang Super Highway in Saraphi, south-east of the city — a straightforward drive on a major highway rather than through town, which makes it faster than the distance suggests from the eastern and southern suburbs, and slow from Mae Rim or San Sai in the north.

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

Unity Concord International School (UCIS) 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:

• Early Learning
• Lower and Upper Elementary
• Middle School
• High School — American diploma with Advanced Placement (AP) electives
• EAL — English as an Additional Language support

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 Unity Concord International School (UCIS) and its accrediting bodies publish, not our verdict:

• Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC)
• Registered with the Thai Ministry of Education
• Part of the Ambassador Education Group

Boarding and the size of the school

Boarding: A day school.

Scale: A roll in the region of 700 students has been reported for the school, drawn from a mix of nationalities, with graduates going on to Thai universities including Chiang Mai University, KMITL and Mahidol as well as institutions abroad. 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

Families who want an American curriculum and AP pathway on a modern campus, particularly those living on the Saraphi, San Kamphaeng and eastern side of the city where the super-highway makes the run easy.

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 Unity Concord International School (UCIS)

The south-eastern highway corridor is the 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:

• The curriculum on offer. Third-party school directories list UCIS variously as British, Cambridge IGCSE, A-level and IB Diploma; the school's own website describes an American, California-standards curriculum with AP. We follow the school's own description — but confirm the exact pathway your child would sit, because directory listings for this school are demonstrably unreliable.
• How established the senior grades are. UCIS opened in 2017, so its Grade 11–12 cohorts and AP option blocks are younger than those at the city's long-standing schools.
• Smoke-season filtration — UCIS does not publish detailed air-quality provision.
• 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 Unity Concord International School (UCIS) 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.