Koh Chang · Schools & education

Schools on Koh Chang.

Koh Chang has no international school — and neither does anywhere else in Trat province. What it does have is 5 licensed government schools that no English-language guide names, including this one until August 2026. Here they all are, where each one stops, and the honest alternatives — one of which is a great deal closer than the guides tell you.

Overview

The short version

Koh Chang is one of Thailand's largest islands, and unlike Phuket, Koh Samui or Koh Lanta it has no English-medium or internationally accredited school. We checked whether that claim survives disproof, and it does — but the true version is wider than the island. There is no international school anywhere in Trat province. Neither international-school census we use returns a Trat entry, and Thai-language searching returns only Thai-curriculum schools. Exactly 0 of the island's 5 licensed schools teach in English.

What changed in this guide is everything on the other side of that sentence. The island's schools are real, named, licensed institutions with addresses, phone numbers and in two cases their own websites — and until now this page described them collectively as “ordinary Thai government schools” and named none of them. The nearest English-medium teaching is not in Rayong; it is in Trat town, a ferry and about half an hour away. There are 2 real boarding schools on the Eastern Seaboard, not one. And the bridge everyone mentions will not carry a car until the middle of the next decade on any published timeline. Pair this with the Koh Chang cost-of-living guide and the Koh Chang hub.

The island

The 6 settings that actually exist on Koh Chang

5 licensed government schools and one charity project. Every name below is checked against a source recorded on this page — a school's own website where one exists, a Ministry of Education service-area listing or OBEC school code where one does not.

School	Where	Stages	Language	Licensed by
Ban Khlong Prao School — โรงเรียนบ้านคลองพร้าว	Ban Khlong Prao, Tambon Ko Chang	Anuban 1 to Mathayom 3 (roughly ages 4 to 15)	Thai	Trat Primary Educational Service Area Office (สพป.ตราด), under OBEC and the Ministry of Education
Koh Chang Wittayakhom School — โรงเรียนเกาะช้างวิทยาคม	Moo 3, Tambon Ko Chang	Reported by directories as Anuban 2 to Mathayom 6 — not stated on the school's own public pages (see flags)	Thai	Secondary Educational Service Area Office Chanthaburi–Trat (สพม.จันทบุรี ตราด) — the only setting on the island under the SECONDARY office
Wat Salak Phet School — โรงเรียนวัดสลักเพชร	Tambon Ko Chang Tai — the island's south-east	Not published in a source we could confirm (see flags)	Thai	Trat Primary Educational Service Area Office (สพป.ตราด), OBEC school code 1023150121
Wat Watchakham Kotchathawip School — โรงเรียนวัดวัชคามคชทวีป	Ao Salak Khok, the island's east coast	Not published in a source we could confirm (see flags)	Thai	Trat Primary Educational Service Area Office (สพป.ตราด), OBEC school code 1023150120
Wat Khlong Son School — โรงเรียนวัดคลองสน	Ao Khlong Son, the island's north	Not published in a source we could confirm (see flags)	Thai	Trat Primary Educational Service Area Office (สพป.ตราด)
Cambodia Kids Care (CKC) — ดำเนินการโดยมูลนิธิ Studybuddies	A settlement near Klong Prao village	Children aged roughly 4 to 14	English and Thai	None — a charity project run by the Studybuddies Foundation, a Thai charity based on Koh Chang. It is not a licensed school and receives no funding from Koh Chang's authorities or the Thai government.

Where each one stops

On a small island the question that decides a move is not which curriculum a school teaches but how old your child can be and still have a class to sit in. Of the 6 settings here, 3 publish or have reported an age ceiling and 3 do not publish one at all — which is itself a finding, and the reason the first item in the checklist below is a phone call.

Setting	Stops at	Address
Ban Khlong Prao School	M3 (~15)	29/15 Moo 4, Ban Khlong Prao, Tambon Ko Chang, Amphoe Ko Chang, Trat
Koh Chang Wittayakhom School	M6 (~18), reported not confirmed	23/6 Moo 3, Tambon Ko Chang, Amphoe Ko Chang, Trat 23170
Wat Salak Phet School	Not confirmed	Tambon Ko Chang Tai, Amphoe Ko Chang, Trat 23170 (street address not published)
Wat Watchakham Kotchathawip School	Not confirmed	Amphoe Ko Chang, Trat (street address not published)
Wat Khlong Son School	Not confirmed	Amphoe Ko Chang, Trat (street address not published)
Cambodia Kids Care (CKC)	~14, non-curricular	Klong Prao, Amphoe Ko Chang, Trat (no published street address)

Ban Khlong Prao School

โรงเรียนบ้านคลองพร้าว · 29/15 Moo 4, Ban Khlong Prao, Tambon Ko Chang, Amphoe Ko Chang, Trat · Tel 039 557 213 · klongprao1@gmail.com

The government school in the village BAANLYY's own areas guide names as the island's most family-oriented base — and the single most useful fact on this page for anyone assuming Klong Prao means a mainland school run. It runs the full Thai basic-education range from Anuban 1 all the way to Mathayom 3, on two sites: about 5 rai 1 ngan 92 square wa for the early years and about 25 rai for the basic-education years. The school states plainly that it is the sole service-area school for Moo 4, Ban Khlong Prao, and its published vision is built around local vocational skills under the sufficiency-economy philosophy. Instruction is in Thai.

Sourcing: Address, stage range, land area, service-area status, telephone, email and vision all read directly from the school's own ข้อมูลโรงเรียน page at banklongprao.ac.th.

Koh Chang Wittayakhom School

โรงเรียนเกาะช้างวิทยาคม · 23/6 Moo 3, Tambon Ko Chang, Amphoe Ko Chang, Trat 23170

The island's secondary school, and the only setting on Koh Chang that any source places as running to Mathayom 6 — meaning it is the only route on the island to a Thai upper-secondary qualification without leaving for the mainland. It sits under the secondary service area office in Chanthaburi, not the Trat primary office, which is why it is easy to miss in a search filtered to Trat. Its own site publishes the Thai Basic Education Core Curriculum B.E. 2551 as the curriculum and carries school code 23010116.

Sourcing: Address, licensing office, school code and curriculum read directly from kchw.ac.th. The stage range is from provincial directories, not the school.

The school's own public pages do not state its stage range, and the aggregated sources disagree — one provincial directory gives Anuban 2 to Mathayom 6, while a separate education dataset appears to show it topping out at Mathayom 3. We publish both positions and neither as settled. If your child's year group is the question that decides your move, this is the phone call to make first.

Wat Salak Phet School

โรงเรียนวัดสลักเพชร · Tambon Ko Chang Tai, Amphoe Ko Chang, Trat 23170 (street address not published)

The government school serving Salak Phet, the fishing community on the island's far south-eastern shore and the longest drive from the west-coast beach belt. It is the most pedagogically interesting school on the island: since the 2561 (2018) academic year, under director Nanthiya Buatri, it has run the Jitsuksa and Problem-Based Learning model developed at Lamplaimat Pattana School in Buriram, alongside its own '7C – WSLP' whole-school framework and Thai-through-literature teaching. The published day includes three separate mindfulness blocks — twenty minutes at 08:10, a fifteen-minute body scan at 12:15 and fifteen minutes at 15:30. Teaching is in Thai throughout.

Sourcing: The 7C–WSLP model, the Jitsuksa/PBL adoption date, the director's name and the daily timings come from the school's own write-up published by Thailand's Education Sandbox (พื้นที่นวัตกรรมการศึกษา, OBEC). Sub-district, OBEC code and staff/roll figures come from provincial directories.

Directories give roughly 18 teachers and 258 students. That figure is not on any page the school itself publishes, so treat it as indicative rather than current.
We could not confirm the stage range from a source the school controls, so we do not state one.

Wat Watchakham Kotchathawip School

โรงเรียนวัดวัชคามคชทวีป · Amphoe Ko Chang, Trat (street address not published)

A small government school beside the temple of the same name at Ao Salak Khok, on the quiet mangrove-lined east coast rather than the resort strip. It is the smallest setting on the island by a wide margin. For a family, its practical significance is not enrolment but geography: it is a reminder that the east coast is populated, served and lived in year-round, which is not the impression the west-coast beach guides give.

Sourcing: OBEC school code and licensing office from provincial directories; the Ao Salak Khok location is corroborated by island gazetteers listing the temple it adjoins.

Directories give roughly 6 teachers and 87 students. Not published by the school, so indicative only.
We could not confirm the stage range from a source the school controls, so we do not state one.

Wat Khlong Son School

โรงเรียนวัดคลองสน · Amphoe Ko Chang, Trat (street address not published)

The government school at Khlong Son, the bay closest to the ferry piers and the first settlement most arrivals pass. If a family's routine involves regular mainland crossings, this is the school on the shortest side of the island for it — a point our own areas guide already makes about Klong Son as a place to live, without ever mentioning that it has a school.

Sourcing: Existence and licensing office from provincial directories and the Trat schools register.

No OBEC ten-digit code was recoverable for this school from a source we could read directly, and it publishes no website. Its existence is well attested; its details are not.
We could not confirm the stage range from a source the school controls, so we do not state one.

Cambodia Kids Care (CKC)

ดำเนินการโดยมูลนิธิ Studybuddies · Klong Prao, Amphoe Ko Chang, Trat (no published street address)

Koh Chang's resorts and construction sites are largely staffed by Cambodian workers — by one long-running island source, around 8,000 people. Those employed without a work permit cannot access the benefits that come with one, and in practice their children often do not enter the Thai school system. Cambodia Kids Care exists to fill that gap: a simple thatched-roof school running every weekday from 08:00 to 15:00 for up to fifty children aged four to fourteen, teaching in both English and Thai, with a lunch, a safe place to be while parents work, and older children mentoring younger ones. It has one permanent teacher, Uan, who has been there since it opened. It is funded entirely by donations — it came close to closing in 2015, and its running costs work out at about one US dollar per child per school day. Visitors are welcomed to teach for a day or a month, and practical skills are as useful as classroom ones.

Sourcing: Founding (mid-2008, by a Dutch couple), the Studybuddies Foundation's role, hours, age range, roll, teaching languages, funding history and the contact route are from I Am Koh Chang's long-running page on the project, maintained on the island.

The project's operating name is Cambodia Kids Care; Studybuddies is the foundation that runs it. Guides that call it 'Study Buddies school' — including this one until August 2026 — are naming the charity, not the school.
It is not an accredited school and is not a schooling route for a relocating foreign family. It is included here because it is real, it is the honest answer to 'what else is there', and it is worth supporting.

The correction that matters most

Which way you drive

Every English-language guide to schooling near Koh Chang — this one included, until August 2026 — sends families west: Rayong, then Pattaya, then Bangkok, at two and a half, four and six hours respectively. That advice is not wrong so much as incomplete in an expensive way. The nearest English-medium teaching of any kind is roughly 40 km east-ish, in Trat town, about half an hour from the ferry pier a Koh Chang family already uses every time they leave the island. It is not an international school, and this page will not dress it up as one. It is a government English Programme, and it is the closest thing to English-medium schooling within reach of a daily or weekly routine.

West of the island, the second correction is that there are 2 substantial boarding schools on the Eastern Seaboard, not one. BAANLYY's own Pattaya schools data has carried both for months; this guide named only Regents.

Route	Where the campus actually is	Curriculum	Boarding
Satri Prasoetsin School — English Programme	Trat town, Mueang Trat — the nearest mainland town to the Koh Chang ferries	Thai national curriculum taught in English (English Programme), alongside Gifted and SMTE science-maths streams	Day school
Regents International School Pattaya	33/3 Moo 1, Pong, Bang Lamung, Chonburi 20150 — inland, near Mabprachan Lake	British (EYFS, IPC, IGCSE) plus both A-Level and the IB Diploma	Day and boarding, with boarding houses on the campus
Rugby School Thailand	Khao Mai Kaew, Bang Lamung, Chonburi 20150 — around 25 minutes inland from Pattaya	British — Pre-Prep, Prep and Senior, IGCSE then A-Level	Day and boarding, with boarding houses and a dedicated Sixth Form Centre
St. Andrews International School, Green Valley	Samnak Thon, Ban Chang district, RAYONG province — around 45 minutes south of Pattaya, and roughly 30 km west of Rayong city, not on its doorstep	British National Curriculum with the IB Primary Years Programme and the IB Diploma	Day school — we could not verify a boarding provision and will not imply one

Satri Prasoetsin School — English Programme · โรงเรียนสตรีประเสริฐศิลป์

A government secondary school in Trat town, under the same secondary service area office as Koh Chang's own secondary school, running a full English Programme as a special-classroom stream. It competes in the regional EP/MEP English academic skills competitions and recruits subject teachers specifically to teach in the EP. On any published route this is the closest English-medium teaching to Koh Chang — a ferry and roughly half an hour, not the two-and-a-half to six hours the Eastern Seaboard and Bangkok options require. It is not an international school and does not pretend to be: it is the Thai curriculum, delivered in English, on the Thai school calendar.

Entry is at Mathayom 1 and Mathayom 4 only, on the national admissions timetable. There is no rolling mid-year intake, so a family arriving in October cannot simply enrol.
Selection for EP and special classrooms is by examination administered in Thai. Cost is not access — this route is realistically open to children who already have working Thai, regardless of what a family can pay.
Trat Trakarn Khun School (โรงเรียนตราษตระการคุณ), also in Trat town, is reported by tutoring services to run an EP special classroom. We could not confirm that from the school's own site and so do not publish it as fact — but it is worth asking about alongside Satri Prasoetsin.

Regents International School Pattaya

The Nord Anglia school on the Eastern Seaboard, open since 1994 and taking children from 2 to 18. It is the one campus in the region offering both A-Levels and the IB Diploma, which is why it comes up first for a Koh Chang family that wants a choice of exit qualification and can only realistically board. The campus is inland near Mabprachan Lake, not in Pattaya city.

Weekly or termly boarding is the realistic pattern from Koh Chang. This is not a commute — treat any guide that implies otherwise as untested.

Rugby School Thailand

The second substantial boarding school on the Eastern Seaboard, opened in 2017 on an 80-acre purpose-built countryside campus — the largest school site in the Pattaya area — and taking children from 2 to 18. BAANLYY's own Pattaya schools data has carried it for months, and this guide never mentioned it: a Koh Chang family reading the old page would have believed there was exactly one boarding option in the region when there are two.

Runs IGCSE and A-Level. It does not offer the IB Diploma, so if the IB is the requirement, this is not the school.

St. Andrews International School, Green Valley

A 30-rai countryside campus in open country next to the Green Valley golf area, part of the Cognita group and a member of the Council of International Schools, taking children from 2 to 18 with around 450 students from more than 30 nationalities. It is a genuinely good school and the wrong shape for most Koh Chang families: it is a day school, and it sits at the far end of the Eastern Seaboard from the island.

This guide previously placed the campus 'roughly 25 minutes from Rayong town', which understates the journey from Koh Chang's direction. Ban Chang is west of Rayong city, on the way to Pattaya — so the drive time this page gives for Rayong does not apply to this campus.
It is a Cognita school, not a Nord Anglia one. The two are routinely confused in Eastern Seaboard listings.
Because boarding is unverified, a family choosing this school is realistically choosing to move off Koh Chang, not to commute or board.

The English Programme catch — cost is not access

Thai government English Programmes are the affordable answer that guides across the country recommend without explaining how you get in, and the omission decides the question for most newly-arrived foreign families. At Satri Prasoetsin in Trat town, entry to the English Programme is at Mathayom 1 and Mathayom 4 only, on the national admissions timetable, and selection is by examination administered in Thai. There is no rolling mid-year intake. A family arriving in October with a thirteen-year-old who does not read Thai is not choosing between this and an international school on grounds of price — the route is closed to them this year regardless of budget, and opens at the next national intake if the language gap can be closed.

The same caveat applies to the island's own schools. They are open to foreign children and effectively free, but they teach the Thai national curriculum entirely in Thai. That works for a child young enough to immerse or already fluent, and it is not a substitute for an English-medium education for a teenager arriving mid-way through secondary school.

After school

After Mathayom 6 — where higher education actually is

Until September 2026 this entire Koh Chang guide set said one thing about post-school study, on the visa and long-stay housing page: that the island has no university or major institute of the kind that sponsors a student visa. That is true, and it was the end of the sentence rather than the start of one. Nobody had asked the question it should have provoked — what awards a qualification in Trat province, and how far away is it? The answer is 6 real routes, 2 of them inside Trat province itself, and 3 of the 6 do not have the word “university” in their name — which is precisely why searching for “universities in Trat” returns nothing useful.

The organising fact is that a Thai qualification is conferred by an awarding body, which is not always the institution whose sign is over the door. Two of the routes below teach in one province and confer in another. Read the table by the “highest you can finish here” column, not by the name.

Route	What it is	Highest you can finish here	Where it actually is
Trat Community College	Community college	Associate degree (อนุปริญญา)	64/1 Moo 2, Trat–Khlong Yai Road, Tambon Noen Sai, Mueang Trat 23000
Trat Technical College	Technical college	Bachelor's degree (ทล.บ., continuing)	480 Moo 9, Sukhumvit Road, Tambon Wang Krachae, Mueang Trat 23000
Institute of Vocational Education: Eastern Region	Degree-awarding institute	No teaching at the head office — it is the awarding body, and its office sits inside Rayong Technical College	Head office inside Rayong Technical College, 086/13 Taksin Road, Tha Pradu, Mueang Rayong 21000
Rambhai Barni Rajabhat University	Rajabhat university	Doctoral degree	41 Moo 5, Tambon Tha Chang, Mueang Chanthaburi — about 6 km out of Chanthaburi town at the Khao Rai Ya junction, on a site of 720 rai 3 ngan
Burapha University, Chanthaburi Campus	Public university campus	Bachelor's degree (postgraduate study is centred on the Bang Saen campus)	57 Moo 1, Chonprathan Road, Tambon Khomong, Amphoe Tha Mai, Chanthaburi — plot one of the campus land grant, 450 rai 3 ngan 34 square wa
Ramkhamhaeng University — regional study	Open university	Bachelor's degree, studied from wherever you live — including Koh Chang — and examined on the mainland	No campus in Trat province. The nearest of the university's 23 regional campuses is Prachin Buri, the only one in eastern Thailand

4 of the 6 let you finish a full bachelor's degree at the location named. Every one of them teaches in Thai.

Trat Community College · วิทยาลัยชุมชนตราด

Community college · Institute of Community Colleges, under the Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation (MHESI) · Tel 0 3967 1889

The single most useful fact on this page, and the one no English-language Koh Chang guide carries: Trat province has a public higher-education institution of its own, and it is a community college. Its own website describes it, in as many words, as the only higher-education institution in Trat province — and its founding history explains why it exists at all. Community colleges were created by government policy on 26 February 2001 and given their legal form by the 2003 ministerial regulation on sub-degree higher education, which defines a community college as "a state institution managed by the community". They were placed in provinces that had no higher-education institution of their own. Trat's was declared on 8 October 2004, in the buildings of the disused Mueang Trat School on a site of 8 rai 1 ngan 99.5 square wa; it used the Trat provincial office as its address while the buildings were repaired, and opened them on 23 March 2006. For the 2568 (2025) academic year it enrols associate-degree students in six subjects: Management, Tourism and Hospitality, Early Childhood Development, Digital Business Technology, Agriculture and Processing, and Public Administration — each now offered as a three-year programme alongside the older two-year versions. It also runs short courses with published prices, from men's barbering to baking to natural-dye textiles.

Awards: Associate degree (อนุปริญญา) in six subjects; Short vocational and skills courses; Credit-bank certificate courses (สัมฤทธิบัตร). From Koh Chang: Mueang Trat — the same mainland town as the nearest English Programme, a ferry and roughly half an hour from the piers.

Sourcing: Founding dates, the enabling policy and regulation, the Mueang Trat School buildings, the 8 rai 1 ngan 99.5 square wa site area, the 23 March 2006 opening, the address, the telephone number and the six associate-degree subjects all read directly from the college's own history and courses pages at tratcc.ac.th. The "only higher-education institution in Trat province" description is the college's own site-wide meta description.

It awards the associate degree, not a bachelor's. That is not a criticism — it is the qualification the institution is constituted to award — but a guide that files it under "universities in Trat" would mislead you about what you can finish there.
Its Wikipedia entry disagrees with the college on three points: it gives the address as 99/9 Moo 2 rather than 64/1, the site area as 8 rai 2 ngan rather than 8 rai 1 ngan 99.5 square wa, and the former school as Wiwek Mueang Trat rather than Mueang Trat. We publish the college's own figures.
Wikipedia also still places the Institute of Community Colleges under the Ministry of Education. The college's own history page records the move: under the Reorganisation of Ministries, Bureaux and Departments Act (No. 19) B.E. 2562 and the MHESI Administration Act B.E. 2562, both the Institute and Trat Community College became state higher-education institutions under MHESI. Anything written before 2019 has the ministry wrong.

Trat Technical College · วิทยาลัยเทคนิคตราด

Technical college · Office of the Vocational Education Commission (OVEC), Ministry of Education — teaching site; the bachelor's degree is conferred by the Institute of Vocational Education: Eastern Region · Tel 039 518 105

This is the answer to "where can I finish a bachelor's degree without leaving Trat province", and the sign over the door does not say so. Trat Technical College teaches to ปวช. and ปวส. level like any technical college, and it also runs a continuing Bachelor of Technology in Automotive Technology, entry to which requires a cumulative GPA of at least 2.00 and applications through the national vocational admissions system. The degree itself is not the college's to award: it is conferred by the Institute of Vocational Education: Eastern Region, which is a separate legal body with its own council. The college's own departments span electrical, electronics, machine tools, mechanical, welding and construction trades alongside accounting, marketing, digital business technology, information technology, hotel, tourism and logistics.

Awards: ปวช. (upper-secondary vocational certificate); ปวส. (higher vocational diploma); Bachelor of Technology (ทล.บ.) in Automotive Technology, continuing programme. From Koh Chang: Mueang Trat, on the Sukhumvit road through town — a ferry and roughly half an hour from the piers.

Sourcing: The address, telephone number, official email and department list are read from the college's own site at trattc.ac.th; the bachelor's programme, the 2.00 GPA floor and the admissions route are from its own 2568 admissions announcement on the same domain. Its membership of the Institute of Vocational Education: Eastern Region is confirmed on the Institute's own site, which publishes the same 480 Moo 9 Sukhumvit Road address.

Search-engine summaries circulate a second address for this college on Tha Ruea Chang Road. It does not appear anywhere on the college's own site or on the Institute's, so we do not publish it.
The bachelor's degree is a continuing (ต่อเนื่อง) programme, meaning it is designed to be entered after a ปวส. diploma rather than straight from Mathayom 6. It is a route for someone already holding a vocational diploma, not a general school-leaver route.

Institute of Vocational Education: Eastern Region · สถาบันการอาชีวศึกษาภาคตะวันออก

Degree-awarding institute · Constituted under the Vocational Education Act B.E. 2551; ministerial signature dated 13 June 2012

The degree-awarding body most Trat households have never heard of, and the reason a search for "universities in Trat" returns nothing useful. Institutes of this class are created by grouping existing vocational colleges under one degree-awarding council, so the college you attend and the body that confers your qualification can sit in different provinces — and here they do. This institute's nine member colleges are Chonburi Technical, Sattahip Technical, Chonburi Vocational, the Science-Based Technology Vocational College in Chonburi, Rayong Technical, Map Ta Phut Technical, Ban Khai Technical, Chanthaburi Technical and Trat Technical. Exactly one of the nine is in Trat province, and it is the one at the end of the Koh Chang ferry route.

Awards: Bachelor of Technology (ทล.บ.) degrees, conferred on behalf of its member colleges. From Koh Chang: Two provinces west of Trat. You would not travel here to study — the teaching happens at the member college nearest you, which for Trat province is Trat Technical College.

Sourcing: The member-college list and the Trat Technical College address are read from the Institute's own site at ivee.ac.th. The founding statute and the 13 June 2012 ministerial signature are carried in BAANLYY's Pattaya universities data, researched against the same source in September 2026.

BAANLYY's own Pattaya guide has carried this institute since September 2026, and it already recorded that its member colleges reach "Chonburi, Rayong, Chanthaburi and Trat". The Koh Chang guide set had never mentioned it. The proof was in our own repository before this research began.

Rambhai Barni Rajabhat University · มหาวิทยาลัยราชภัฏรำไพพรรณี

Rajabhat university · Public Rajabhat university under MHESI

The nearest Rajabhat university to Koh Chang, and for most people in Trat the nearest full public university of any kind. It grew out of Chanthaburi Teachers' College, founded in 1972 on Suan Ban Kaeo — the residence of Queen Rambhai Barni, consort of King Rama VII, whose name it carries — and became a university in 2004 along with the rest of the Rajabhat system. Rajabhat universities are the part of the Thai system built specifically to serve their own region rather than draw students to Bangkok, which is why this one, not a Bangkok institution, is the realistic degree destination for a Trat school-leaver.

Awards: Bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees across its faculties. From Koh Chang: Chanthaburi, the next province west along Highway 3. A ferry, then a drive through Trat town and on — a weekly or termly journey, not a daily one.

Sourcing: The address, the 720 rai 3 ngan site, the Khao Rai Ya junction location, the 1972 Chanthaburi Teachers' College origin on Suan Ban Kaeo and the 2004 elevation to university status are drawn from published summaries of the university's own history pages at rbru.ac.th.

There is no Rajabhat university in Trat province, and no Rajabhat teaching centre in Trat that we could confirm. The nearest rectorate is this one.
We did not confirm a per-faculty programme list from the university's own site within this research pass, so this entry describes the institution rather than enumerating its degrees. Check the current faculty list on rbru.ac.th before planning around a specific subject.

Burapha University, Chanthaburi Campus · มหาวิทยาลัยบูรพา วิทยาเขตจันทบุรี

Public university campus · Public comprehensive university under MHESI

The eastern seaboard's comprehensive public university keeps a full campus one province west of Trat, and its subject mix is unusually well matched to this coastline: alongside the Faculty of Science and Arts it runs a Faculty of Marine Technology and a Faculty of Gems, the latter reflecting Chanthaburi's centuries-old gem trade. The campus began teaching in June 1996 out of a borrowed assembly hall, moved into the old provincial hall in 1997, and only relocated to its permanent site at Khomong in April 2001. It was called the Chanthaburi Information Technology Campus until 1 June 2009, when it took its present name — which is why older directories and older search results file it under a name the university no longer uses.

Awards: Bachelor's degrees in three faculties: Science and Arts, Marine Technology, and Gems. From Koh Chang: Tha Mai district in Chanthaburi, beyond Chanthaburi town — the furthest of the three mainland university options, and the only one with a marine-science and gemmology specialism that reflects this coast.

Sourcing: The land grant, the 450 rai 3 ngan 34 square wa figure for the teaching site, the 1996 and 1997 temporary premises, the April 2001 move to Khomong and the 1 June 2009 renaming are read directly from the campus's own history page at chanthaburi.buu.ac.th. The three faculties are listed on the same site.

Burapha University holds land IN TRAT PROVINCE and does not teach on it. The campus's own history page lists four land plots granted for the Chanthaburi campus, and the fourth is at Thung Roi Ru, Tambon Saen Tung, Amphoe Khao Saming, Trat — 897 rai 1 ngan 30.90 square wa, larger than the Chanthaburi teaching site itself. The university's own account has teaching at Khomong in Tha Mai, not at Saen Tung. If you are ever told Burapha "has a campus in Trat", this land holding is almost certainly what is meant, and it is not a place you can enrol.
Directory summaries give the campus area as 1,406 rai 1 ngan 81 square wa. That figure matches neither the teaching plot nor the sum of the four granted plots on the university's own page, so we do not publish it.

Ramkhamhaeng University — regional study · มหาวิทยาลัยรามคำแหง (นักศึกษาส่วนภูมิภาค)

Open university · Public open-admission university under MHESI

Thailand's open university admits without entrance examination and is built for people who cannot move to a campus, which describes almost every adult on Koh Chang who wants a Thai degree. Its regional students study at a distance and attend only for end-of-semester and re-sit examinations, and the university maintains regional examination centres in provinces well beyond its 23 branch campuses. The nearest listed centre to Koh Chang is in Chanthaburi, hosted at Sriyanusorn School — the same direction of travel as the two universities above, but for two or three days a semester rather than as a commute.

Awards: Bachelor's degrees by open admission, studied at a distance and examined regionally. From Koh Chang: This is the one route on this page you can follow while living on the island. You study by distance and travel only to sit examinations.

Sourcing: The 23 regional campuses, their provinces, the role those campuses play, and the regional examination-centre list including the Chanthaburi centre at Sriyanusorn School are from a long-running Ramkhamhaeng student-information site. The university's own branch page returned an empty response to our tooling on 8 September 2026.

Ramkhamhaeng has no regional campus in Trat province. Prachin Buri is the only eastern one of the 23.
Examination centres change. The source that lists them says so itself, in its own warning to students, and directs them to the current registration handbook. Confirm the Chanthaburi centre on ru.ac.th before you enrol on the strength of it.

What is genuinely not here — and what fills each gap

A named absence is worth more than a vague presence, but only if it comes with the thing that fills it. These 6 were each checked, and each is stated at the level at which it is actually true — island, province or region.

Checked absence	What fills it
There is no university, college or institute of any kind ON KOH CHANG.	Everything on this page is on the mainland. The one route you can pursue from the island itself is Ramkhamhaeng's regional open-admission degree, which requires travel only for examinations.
No university is headquartered in Trat province.	Trat Community College is the province's own higher-education institution and awards the associate degree. Trat Technical College teaches to a bachelor's degree conferred by an institute seated in Rayong. Those two, between them, are what post-school study inside the province means.
There is no Rajabhat university in Trat province.	Rambhai Barni Rajabhat University in Mueang Chanthaburi is the nearest rectorate, one province west.
There is no nursing college in Trat province.	Phrapokklao Nursing College in Chanthaburi, part of the Praboromarajchanok Institute's Faculty of Nursing, is the nearest college awarding the Bachelor of Nursing Science. We did not confirm its street address from its own site in this research pass and so do not publish one.
There is no Ramkhamhaeng regional campus in Trat province.	Prachin Buri is the only one of the 23 in eastern Thailand; the nearest regional examination centre is in Chanthaburi.
We searched for a Mahachulalongkornrajavidyalaya or Mahamakut Buddhist university teaching unit in Trat province and did not find one.	That is a statement about our search, not a finding that none exists. Buddhist universities name their local units after the province and attach them to temples, which makes them easy to miss; if you are looking for one, ask at a provincial temple rather than trusting this line.

One of those rows is a statement about our search rather than a finding, and it is labelled that way on purpose. We would rather publish “we looked and did not find it” than convert a failed search into a claim that something does not exist.

Before you enrol — always confirm

Ask which body confers the qualification, not which building you sit in. On this page two teaching sites hand you a certificate signed by an institution in another province.
Ask whether a programme is 'continuing' (ต่อเนื่อง). A continuing bachelor's is entered after a ปวส. diploma, not after Mathayom 6, and the distinction decides whether the route is open to you at all.
For any Thai public institution, check which ministry it reports to before trusting anything written about it. Community colleges moved from the Ministry of Education to MHESI in 2019 and most secondary sources never updated.
For the open-university route, confirm the current regional examination centre in the registration handbook for your intake, not from any list — including this one.
Every programme on this page is taught in Thai unless the institution tells you otherwise. None of these is an English-medium route, and this guide will not imply one exists where it does not.

Infrastructure

The bridge — and why it should not shape your decision

A sea bridge to Koh Chang is a genuine, funded-to-study government project, and it is nowhere near being a road. It matters here only because a family weighing a mainland school run will be told about it, so the tense has to be exact.

	Where it stands
Status today	Proposed. Feasibility study and Environmental Impact Assessment stage. No construction contract, no cabinet approval.
Route	'Route 3', confirmed June 2025: 5.9 km from Ao Thammachat Lang on the mainland to a point on Koh Chang's EAST coast just north of Amber Sands Beach Resort.
Classification	An expressway. Motorcycle lanes were dropped, then reinstated in the July 2026 round of consultations; pedestrians and bicycles remain excluded.
Cost	Revised in March 2026 from about 12 billion to about 15 billion baht, after motorcycle lanes, wind and wave protection and a navy request for extra navigation-span height.
Published timeline (island source, Aug 2026)	Cabinet submission 2028, land acquisition 2029, construction from 2030, opening 2034.
Published timeline (national press, July 2026)	Cabinet approval 2029, construction from 2031, opening around 2035.

The two published timelines disagree by a year on every milestone, so we print both rather than pick one. On either, a five-year-old starting school on Koh Chang today will have left school before the bridge opens. And when it does open, note where it lands: the east coast, north of Dan Mai — so a family living at Klong Prao or White Sand Beach would still start a mainland school run with a drive across the island.

The homeschool and online route

Homeschooling or an accredited online curriculum remains the mainstream route for foreign families on Koh Chang, for the structural reason set out above rather than by preference: no English-medium school exists on the island or in the province. It works best paired with the long-stay expat community around Klong Prao and White Sand Beach, local tutors and informal co-op-style meetups. Two things are worth doing properly before you rely on it. Research Thailand's registered home-education route, which is a real legal pathway with real paperwork rather than an absence of one. And check your chosen curriculum's accreditation and, critically, its examination centre arrangements — an online British or American programme is only as useful as your ability to physically sit the examinations, and the nearest centres are on the mainland. Budget for the online curriculum, examination entry fees, and the travel and accommodation each examination series will cost.

We do not publish per-school fee figures anywhere on BAANLYY. Directories routinely disagree with each other by tens of thousands of baht for the same school in the same year, and any number we printed would be stale within months. Request each school's current schedule directly. BAANLYY receives no placement fee from any school named on this page.

Where families base themselves

Koh Chang has no urban public-transport network — families get around by scooter or car, with shared songthaews on the main road, and a mainland school run means the ferry. Where you live still matters, and now that the island's schools are named it matters in a more specific way than before:

Area	Fit for families	Why
Klong Prao	Best fit for families	The island's most family-oriented beach — a quieter pace than White Sand Beach, the base for most long-stay expat households with children, and the only west-coast village with a government school running the whole way to Mathayom 3.
White Sand Beach	Good for everyday amenities	The widest choice of shops, clinics and restaurants for daily logistics, though busier and more tourist-driven than Klong Prao. No school of its own — the nearest is at Klong Prao or Klong Son.
Klong Son	Practical if a mainland run matters	Closest to the ferry piers, with its own government school at Wat Khlong Son. The obvious base if a regular crossing to Trat town is part of the family routine.
Dan Mai & the east coast	Where the island administers itself	Dan Mai is the district's administrative centre and the east coast carries two more government schools, at Salak Khok and Salak Phet. Quieter, less resort-driven, and the side of the island the proposed bridge would land on.
Lonely Beach & Bang Bao	Not typically family bases	Lonely Beach is the island's backpacker and nightlife hub; Bang Bao is a working fishing village. Neither is where island families with school-age children typically settle.

See the full Koh Chang areas guide for rents and lifestyle by neighbourhood, and the getting-around guide for realistic ferry and mainland travel times.

Before you commit — always confirm

Ask each island school directly which year groups are actually running this year, not which the curriculum allows. On an island this size a stage can exist on paper and have no class in it.
If you are counting on Koh Chang Wittayakhom for upper secondary, confirm the top year group before you sign a lease. Its own site does not publish its stage range and the directories disagree.
For any Trat-town English Programme, ask for the entrance-examination date and what level of Thai is expected. The intake windows are Mathayom 1 and Mathayom 4 and they are fixed to the national timetable.
For any Eastern Seaboard or Bangkok school, ask about boarding explicitly and get it in writing. Directories in this region record boarding that turns out to belong to a different campus of the same group.
Drive the route you are actually planning, at the hour you would actually drive it, including the ferry queue. Ferry queues at Koh Chang run to several kilometres on long weekends and holidays.
Do not plan around the bridge. On every published timeline, a child starting school on Koh Chang today will have left school before it opens.

How to check a school you were told about actually exists

AI-written school listicles now invent schools, and they do it most freely for exactly the places where real information is thinnest. Researching this page turned up a “Anuban Ko Chang School” that appears in no Ministry of Education register and is almost certainly a garbled reference to Anuban Trat, a real school 40 km away on the mainland. It is not listed above, because it does not exist. Run anything you are told through this test:

Does it have its own website on its own domain — not a directory profile, not a Facebook page alone?
Does it publish a findable street address you can put in a map and see a school at?
Does the published phone number answer, and does someone there confirm the year groups?
Does the homepage carry a closure, merger or rebranding notice? Directories lag these by a year or more.
For Thai schools: does it appear in a Ministry of Education register — an OBEC school code, a service-area office listing — under the district you were told it was in?

What we could not confirm

5 of the 6 island settings and 4 of the mainland routes carry an open question. We publish them rather than smooth them over, because on an island this size the gaps are the useful part.

Koh Chang Wittayakhom School: The school's own public pages do not state its stage range, and the aggregated sources disagree — one provincial directory gives Anuban 2 to Mathayom 6, while a separate education dataset appears to show it topping out at Mathayom 3. We publish both positions and neither as settled. If your child's year group is the question that decides your move, this is the phone call to make first.
Wat Salak Phet School: Directories give roughly 18 teachers and 258 students. That figure is not on any page the school itself publishes, so treat it as indicative rather than current. We could not confirm the stage range from a source the school controls, so we do not state one.
Wat Watchakham Kotchathawip School: Directories give roughly 6 teachers and 87 students. Not published by the school, so indicative only. We could not confirm the stage range from a source the school controls, so we do not state one.
Wat Khlong Son School: No OBEC ten-digit code was recoverable for this school from a source we could read directly, and it publishes no website. Its existence is well attested; its details are not. We could not confirm the stage range from a source the school controls, so we do not state one.
Cambodia Kids Care (CKC): The project's operating name is Cambodia Kids Care; Studybuddies is the foundation that runs it. Guides that call it 'Study Buddies school' — including this one until August 2026 — are naming the charity, not the school. It is not an accredited school and is not a schooling route for a relocating foreign family. It is included here because it is real, it is the honest answer to 'what else is there', and it is worth supporting.
Satri Prasoetsin School — English Programme: Entry is at Mathayom 1 and Mathayom 4 only, on the national admissions timetable. There is no rolling mid-year intake, so a family arriving in October cannot simply enrol. Selection for EP and special classrooms is by examination administered in Thai. Cost is not access — this route is realistically open to children who already have working Thai, regardless of what a family can pay. Trat Trakarn Khun School (โรงเรียนตราษตระการคุณ), also in Trat town, is reported by tutoring services to run an EP special classroom. We could not confirm that from the school's own site and so do not publish it as fact — but it is worth asking about alongside Satri Prasoetsin.
Regents International School Pattaya: Weekly or termly boarding is the realistic pattern from Koh Chang. This is not a commute — treat any guide that implies otherwise as untested.
Rugby School Thailand: Runs IGCSE and A-Level. It does not offer the IB Diploma, so if the IB is the requirement, this is not the school.
St. Andrews International School, Green Valley: This guide previously placed the campus 'roughly 25 minutes from Rayong town', which understates the journey from Koh Chang's direction. Ban Chang is west of Rayong city, on the way to Pattaya — so the drive time this page gives for Rayong does not apply to this campus. It is a Cognita school, not a Nord Anglia one. The two are routinely confused in Eastern Seaboard listings. Because boarding is unverified, a family choosing this school is realistically choosing to move off Koh Chang, not to commute or board.

FAQ

Koh Chang schools questions

Is there an international school on Koh Chang?

No — and the honest version of that answer is bigger than the island. There is no international school and no English-medium school anywhere in Trat province. Neither of the two international-school censuses we use returns a single Trat entry, and Thai-language searches return only Thai-curriculum schools. What Koh Chang has is five licensed Thai government schools and one donation-funded charity project for migrant-worker children. All five schools teach in Thai.

What are the schools on Koh Chang actually called?

Ban Khlong Prao School (โรงเรียนบ้านคลองพร้าว) at Klong Prao, which runs Anuban 1 to Mathayom 3; Koh Chang Wittayakhom School (โรงเรียนเกาะช้างวิทยาคม) at Moo 3, the island's secondary school and the only one any source places as running to Mathayom 6; Wat Khlong Son School in the north; Wat Watchakham Kotchathawip School at Ao Salak Khok on the east coast; and Wat Salak Phet School in the south-east. Every previous version of this guide described them only as 'ordinary Thai government schools' and named none of them.

Where is the nearest English-medium teaching to Koh Chang?

Trat town — a ferry and roughly half an hour's drive, not the two-and-a-half to six hours west that most guides send you. Satri Prasoetsin School (โรงเรียนสตรีประเสริฐศิลป์), a government secondary school under the same service-area office as Koh Chang's own secondary school, runs a full English Programme: the Thai national curriculum taught in English. The catch is not cost. Entry is at Mathayom 1 and Mathayom 4 only, on the fixed national admissions timetable, and selection is by examination administered in Thai — so it is realistically open to children who already have working Thai.

What do expat families on Koh Chang actually do for schooling?

Homeschooling and accredited online curricula are the default, precisely because no English-medium school exists on the island or in the province. Families wanting a full international-school education generally board on the Eastern Seaboard. There are two real boarding options there, not one: Regents International School Pattaya (British, with both A-Level and the IB Diploma) and Rugby School Thailand (British, IGCSE and A-Level, with its own Sixth Form Centre). Bangkok's much larger market is the furthest but widest-choice option.

Will the Koh Chang bridge change the school run?

Not for any child currently of school age. The bridge is real as a project and nowhere near real as a road: it is still in the feasibility and environmental-assessment phase, with no cabinet approval and no construction contract. The island's own long-running news source puts cabinet submission in 2028, construction from 2030 and opening in 2034; national press in July 2026 put cabinet approval in 2029, construction from 2031 and opening around 2035. We report both because they disagree. On either, a five-year-old starting school on Koh Chang today will have finished school before the bridge carries traffic — and when it does, it lands on the east coast near Dan Mai, so a west-coast family's mainland run still begins with a cross-island drive.

Is there a university on Koh Chang, or anywhere in Trat province?

There is nothing on Koh Chang, and no institution called a university anywhere in Trat province — but that is not the same as no higher education. Trat Community College (วิทยาลัยชุมชนตราด) at Tambon Noen Sai in Mueang Trat is the province's own public higher-education institution, established in 2004 and now under the Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation; it awards the associate degree in six subjects, from Management to Agriculture and Processing. Trat Technical College (วิทยาลัยเทคนิคตราด) on Sukhumvit Road in Mueang Trat goes further: it teaches a continuing Bachelor of Technology in Automotive Technology, conferred by the Institute of Vocational Education: Eastern Region, whose office is inside Rayong Technical College two provinces away. That degree is the highest qualification you can finish without leaving Trat province.

Where is the nearest full university to Koh Chang?

Chanthaburi, the next province west. Rambhai Barni Rajabhat University sits about 6 km outside Chanthaburi town at the Khao Rai Ya junction on a 720-rai site, grown from the 1972 Chanthaburi Teachers' College and a university since 2004. Burapha University's Chanthaburi Campus is further out at Tambon Khomong in Tha Mai, running Science and Arts, Marine Technology and — reflecting Chanthaburi's gem trade — a Faculty of Gems. Neither is a commute from the island. The one route you can genuinely follow while living on Koh Chang is Ramkhamhaeng University's regional open-admission degree: you study at a distance and travel only to sit examinations, and the nearest listed regional examination centre is in Chanthaburi. All of these teach in Thai.

Does Burapha University have a campus in Trat?

No, and this is worth getting straight because the confusion is understandable. Burapha University's own Chanthaburi campus history lists four plots of land granted when the campus was established, and the fourth is at Thung Roi Ru, Tambon Saen Tung, Amphoe Khao Saming, in Trat province — 897 rai 1 ngan 30.90 square wa, larger than the plot the campus actually teaches on. But the university's own account puts its teaching at Khomong in Tha Mai district, Chanthaburi, where it moved in April 2001. Trat holds Burapha land, not a Burapha campus, and you cannot enrol there.

Is Cambodia Kids Care a school option for my family?

No, and it does not present itself as one. Cambodia Kids Care — run by the Studybuddies Foundation, a Thai charity based on Koh Chang — teaches up to fifty children of Cambodian migrant workers, aged roughly four to fourteen, every weekday from 08:00 to 15:00 in both English and Thai. It has one permanent teacher, no state funding and no accreditation, and it runs on donations amounting to about one US dollar per child per school day. It is included on this page because it is real, because it is the honest answer to 'what else is there', and because it is worth supporting.

Where should families with school-age children live on Koh Chang?

Klong Prao remains the island's most family-oriented base, and it is now clear why: it has the west coast's only government school running to Mathayom 3. Klong Son suits families crossing to the mainland regularly and has its own school. The east coast around Dan Mai, Salak Khok and Salak Phet is where the island administers itself and carries two more schools. Lonely Beach and Bang Bao are not typical family bases — see the full Koh Chang areas guide for rents and lifestyle by neighbourhood.

This guide is general information for relocation planning, not admissions or financial advice. School stages, curricula, locations and admissions rules change — confirm current details directly with each school.

Sources & References

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.

Plan the rest of your move.

Schooling route sorted — now match a family-friendly area near Klong Prao, and line up healthcare and your visa.

Koh Chang hub Cost of living Healthcare

Hero photo by Tima Miroshnichenko on Pexels.

By Kirby Scofield

Founder of BAANLYY · International real estate broker, investor & relocation specialist

Last updated 8 September 2026 · Last reviewed 8 September 2026

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