Prince of Songkla University, Pattani campus
The university that carries the name of a Songkhla prince and has its medical faculty in Hat Yai actually started here. The cabinet approved Rusamilae, on the western edge of Pattani's capital district, as the site of a new southern university in the mid-1960s; construction began in 1966; the institution took the name Prince of Songkla in September 1967 under a founding Act effective 13 March 1968; and staff and students moved onto the partly-finished campus in November 1968. That makes it the oldest university campus in southern Thailand. It sits at 181 Charoenpradit Road, tambon Rusamilae, Mueang Pattani 94000.
Eight faculties run here — Education, Humanities and Social Sciences, Science and Technology, Islamic Science, Fine and Applied Arts, Communication Sciences, Political Science and Nursing — and the Faculty of Islamic Science is the one with no equivalent anywhere else in the Thai university system, which gives this campus a standing across the wider Malay-Muslim world that is genuinely disproportionate to the size of the town around it. The campus also runs a student mobility programme, hosts exchange students and holds an International Day, and it is in practice the province's only concentration of English speakers and its only place where foreign residents reliably meet each other. We publish no Pattani-campus enrolment figure, because the 33,000-plus number in circulation covers all five PSU campuses and we could not open a campus-specific one.
The ponoh and pondok network
Alongside the state system, Pattani is regionally known for a dense network of ponoh or pondok schools — the traditional Islamic boarding institutions of the Malay-Muslim south, built around a teacher rather than a state curriculum, teaching Islamic sciences, Arabic and Malay, with many partially integrated into Thai national education over recent decades. This is documented in peer-reviewed academic work on Islamic education among Thailand's Pattani Muslim minority. What we could not do is verify a count from a primary source, so this page publishes no number for how many operate in the province, and it would rather leave that blank than repeat a figure it cannot stand behind.
No international-curriculum school, checked rather than assumed. We searched the national list of international schools in Thailand and the member directory of the International Schools Association of Thailand — 45 members nationally — and no Pattani school appears in either. We flag that we checked specifically rather than carrying an assumption forward, because BAANLYY got exactly this wrong once before: every prior small-central-province launch had concluded there was no international school, and then Chai Nat turned out to have one. Pattani does not. The nearest option is Hat Yai, about 108 kilometres and an hour and a half away.
Pattani schools & education FAQ
Is there an international school in Pattani?
No, and this is a clean absence rather than a gap in our research. We searched the national list of international schools in Thailand and the member directory of the International Schools Association of Thailand, which has 45 members nationally, and no Pattani school appears in either. That is consistent with the province sitting outside Thailand's international-school geography entirely: the sector clusters in Bangkok, the eastern seaboard, Phuket, Chiang Mai and — in the far south — Hat Yai. Families needing an international curriculum are therefore looking at Hat Yai in Songkhla, about 108 kilometres and an hour and a half away, which is also where the nearest commercial airport and the nearest tertiary hospitals are. Worth noting for anyone reading BAANLYY's other small-province guides: we do not carry the assumption forward. Chai Nat, a small central province where every prior launch had concluded there was no international school, turned out to have one. We checked Pattani specifically and found none.
What is Prince of Songkla University's Pattani campus?
The founding campus of the university and the oldest university campus in southern Thailand. The cabinet approved Rusamilae as the site in the mid-1960s, construction began in 1966, the institution took the name Prince of Songkla in September 1967 under a founding Act effective 13 March 1968, and staff and students moved onto the partly-completed campus in November 1968. It stands at 181 Charoenpradit Road, tambon Rusamilae, Mueang Pattani 94000, on 0-7331-3928 to 31. Eight faculties operate here: Education, Humanities and Social Sciences, Science and Technology, Islamic Science, Fine and Applied Arts, Communication Sciences, Political Science, and Nursing. The Faculty of Islamic Science is the one that makes this campus distinctive across the region rather than merely locally — there is no equivalent at any other Thai university. We publish no Pattani-campus enrolment figure because we could not open one; the 33,000-plus student number that circulates is for all five PSU campuses together.
What are ponoh or pondok schools?
The traditional Islamic boarding schools of the Malay-Muslim south, and Pattani is regionally known for a dense network of them alongside the state system. Students board and study Islamic sciences, Arabic and Malay in an institution built around a teacher rather than a state curriculum, and many have been partially integrated with Thai national education over recent decades. We found this documented in peer-reviewed academic literature on Islamic education among Thailand's Pattani Muslim minority, but we could not verify a count from a primary source — so we publish no number for how many operate in the province. If schooling in this system matters to your decision, that is a question for the provincial education office and for the schools themselves rather than for a website.
What are the options for a foreign family with school-age children?
Realistically, three, and none of them is easy. First, Thai state or Thai private schooling in Pattani, which means Thai-language instruction in a province where Pattani Malay is also widely spoken — workable for young children, difficult for older ones arriving without Thai. Second, commuting or boarding to Hat Yai, about an hour and a half each way, which is what the geography pushes most international families toward. Third, home education, which is legally recognised in Thailand but requires registration with the local education area office and a fair amount of administration. Anyone weighing this should also read the security section on our hub, because part of the province sits under an Emergency Decree extended to 19 October 2026 and three Western governments carry standing travel advice about it — a factor that affects school-run routines and insurance as much as anything else.
Are there jobs teaching English in Pattani?
Few, and they do not come to you. Ajarn.com's Pattani region guide, written by a resident teacher and updated 7 February 2026, is direct about it: opportunities are limited to say the least, amounting to a handful of government schools and a university that sometimes employs foreign teachers, and Pattani is not a place where jobs pop up on job boards. The implication is that posts move through local networks and personal introductions rather than through advertised recruitment, which is a very different job search from Bangkok or Chiang Mai. The same guide notes that foreigners are still rare enough in the province that people are curious, and says plainly that Pattani only suits a small minority of expats looking for somewhere to call home.
Sources & References
- Prince of Songkla University, Pattani Campus
- Pattani province — Wikipedia
- Pattani region guide (teacher-written, updated Feb 2026) — Ajarn.com
- Ministry of Education, Thailand
- National Statistical Office, Thailand
School and university provision changes. Confirm curricula, fees and admissions directly with the institutions. General information, not education or immigration advice.
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