Schools & universities in Lamphun.

The older of the two large government secondary schools in the provincial capital, founded in 1904 and named by King Rama VI in honour of Chao Chakkhamkhajornsak, the last ruler of Lamphun. It is genuinely large: the Ministry's school census for the first semester of the 2026 academic year reports roughly 3,400 students, split almost evenly between lower secondary (about 1,700) and upper secondary (about 1,690). It sits under the Lampang-Lamphun Secondary Educational Service Area Office. Teaching is Thai-medium, but the school runs a named special language stream — its EPDP (English Programme Development Plan) classrooms, offered at both lower- and upper-secondary level — which is the closest thing in the province to an intensive-English government track. Enrolment figures move each June; confirm current programmes and intake directly with the school.

The province has two big government secondaries, not one, and most guides name only Chakkham. Suanboonyopatham Lamphun sits at 12 Lamphun-Pa Sang Road in Tambon Nai Mueang — the same central sub-district as Chakkham Khanathon and as Mongkhol Wittaya below, roughly ten minutes apart — teaches the full M.1 to M.6 range, is classed by the Ministry in its largest size band, and carries around 3,300 students. It reports to the same Lampang-Lamphun Secondary Educational Service Area Office. It marked its 97th anniversary in July 2026, which places its founding in the late 1920s; a commonly repeated opening date of 22 July 1928 does not reconcile exactly with the school's own anniversary count, so we give the anniversary rather than assert a year. Its own published administrative orders for the 2026 academic year name two special-classroom streams in particular: an ICP Chinese programme at M.1 and M.2 running HSK exam preparation, and an SMTE science, mathematics, technology and environment stream. The same orders show a French-language camp and a language and culture exchange with Gan Eng Seng Secondary School in Singapore. Third-party school directories also list Mini English Program and Gifted Math streams here; we could not confirm those on the school's own site, so treat them as worth asking about rather than as established.

CMU's Lamphun site has a formal name worth knowing when you go looking for it: the Chiang Mai University Hariphunchai Education Center, at 205 Moo 2, Tambon Si Bua Ban, Mueang Lamphun district. It is not a recent arrival — CMU built an administration and services building plus four animal laboratory buildings there for its Faculty of Veterinary Medicine in 1992, and in 2000 the university adopted a thirty-year master plan for developing the site. That history is the honest frame: it is a long-horizon satellite campus and research footprint rather than a full second university town, and the faculties and programmes physically taught there change as the master plan advances. Check CMU directly for what is currently delivered on site.

The vaguest line in most Lamphun guides — including, until this revision, our own — is that MCU 'runs a Buddhist college' here. It is worth being specific, because this is the one institution in the province that teaches all the way to a doctorate. The college publishes its own address as 192 Moo 2, Tambon Ton Thong, Mueang Lamphun 51000 (053-563163). It was founded in 1997 inside Wat Phra That Hariphunchai Woramahawihan itself — the royal temple whose chedi appears on the provincial seal — as an education centre of MCU's Chiang Mai campus, teaching social studies education first; the MCU Act was signed on 21 September 1997 and gazetted on 1 October 1997, at which point it took its present name. In 2000 Chao Dararat Na Lamphun, a descendant of Lamphun's ruling house, donated two adjoining plots on the Lamphun-Pa Sang road at Ban San Ton Thong, and in 2004 the college moved there, about 2km from the temple. Its own history page gives the donated area as 28 rai in one paragraph and 20 rai in another, so we quote neither as settled. What it teaches now, from its own prospectus: a doctorate in Buddhist Studies (พธ.ด.); master's degrees in Buddhist Studies (พธ.ม.) and Public Administration (รป.ม.); and bachelor's degrees in Buddhist Studies, Social Studies Education (ค.บ., which is a teaching qualification), Public Administration and English (ศศ.บ.). MCU educates monastic and lay students across its network, but this college publishes no admissions rule we could read, so ask it directly.

Lamphun's post-16 education is heavily vocational, which is what you would expect of a province built around an industrial estate, and no honest guide should leave it out. Lamphun Technical College is at 42 Tambon Nai Mueang, Mueang Lamphun 51000 (053-511073) — the same sub-district as both provincial secondaries — and it is a degree-awarding site, not only a ปวช./ปวส. certificate college. It is a member college of the Institute of Vocational Education, Northern Region 1, whose headquarters sits outside the province at 171 Moo 11, Tambon Yu Wa, San Pa Tong district, Chiang Mai 50120 (053-216663), and the institute's own published course list gives Lamphun Technical College three Bachelor of Technology (ทล.บ.) continuation programmes: Electrical Technology, Construction Management Technology and Digital Business Technology. That is three of the institute's thirteen degree programmes across five colleges — level with Chiang Mai Technical College, and behind only Chiang Mai Vocational College. The college also hosts the Lamphun Provincial Vocational Education Office and publishes the provincial roster, which is larger than the province's size suggests: Pa Sang Industrial and Community Education College, Ban Hong Industrial and Community Education College, Lamphun College of Agriculture and Technology, and the private Charinrat Lamphun Technology College, Mooban Kru Northern Technology College and Ekpanya Hariphunchai Vocational College.

Thailand's big open university runs 23 regional campuses and Lamphun is not one of them. A Lamphun resident studying with Ramkhamhaeng at a distance enrols at the Chiang Mai campus — the same half-hour drive that governs international schooling here, which is why the two decisions tend to get made together. We publish this as a named absence with a named alternative rather than leaving the question open.

Lamphun has a private sector of roughly two dozen schools registered with the Office of the Private Education Commission, and two are worth naming because they are the realistic private options in the provincial capital. Baiboon Lamphun School, at 127 Moo 2 on the Lamphun-Doi Ti road in Wiang Yong sub-district, covers pre-kindergarten, kindergarten and primary and states explicitly that it builds its teaching on English as the language of communication. Mongkhol Wittaya School, at 85 Moo 3 on Chamathewi Road in the Nai Mueang sub-district of the old town, runs from kindergarten through Mathayom 3. Neither is an international school and neither should be described as one — but for a young child, a private school with an English emphasis inside Lamphun is a materially different proposition from a forty-minute daily drive, and both are worth visiting before you write the province off.

Each of Lamphun's eight districts has government primary and secondary schools, plus anuban (kindergarten) provision. Primary schooling is administered through two Lamphun Primary Educational Service Area Offices (Areas 1 and 2), which is how a province this size is split — Area 1 covering the capital and the north, Area 2 the southern and hill districts. These schools are Thai-medium and serve local families well; for a non-Thai-speaking child arriving mid-schooling they are a significant adjustment, and worth visiting before committing.

Lamphun has no full international-curriculum school, and we will not imply otherwise. Families needing an IB, British or American track are commuting to Chiang Mai — but the destination deserves naming rather than being left vague, because which school you choose changes which part of Lamphun you should live in. Panyaden International School sits in Hang Dong district on Chiang Mai's southern side, the closest of the group to Lamphun, and is bilingual across ages 2 to 18, running the International Primary Curriculum, the International Middle Years Curriculum and the IB Diploma Programme at the top. Lanna International School, founded in 1993, teaches a British curriculum to IGCSE and A-Level. Nakornpayap International School, also founded in 1993, is in San Phisuea on the city's northern edge and teaches a US-aligned curriculum with Advanced Placement in Grades 11 and 12. Chiang Mai International School is the long-established US-curriculum option in the city itself. Note the geography: the two nearest to Lamphun sit on Chiang Mai's south and centre, while the northern schools add real distance to a daily run — which is exactly why families on an international track cluster in Lamphun's northern Ban Thi corridor rather than the southern districts.