The honest version -- and it survived the census check
Phang Nga does not have an established, fee-paying international school -- day or boarding -- and we would rather say that plainly than invent one. This is not just our impression. Two independent censuses return zero rows for the province: Wikipedia's List of international schools in Thailand, which files every school by province and lists none under Phang Nga, and the international-schools-database / doris directories, which return schools for Phuket, Krabi and Koh Lanta and none inside Phang Nga. Several provinces in this rotation turned out to have schools their guides denied; Phang Nga genuinely does not.
So the real question for a relocating family is not which school. It is where on Phuket island the school sits relative to the Sarasin Bridge -- because the island runs roughly 50 km north to south, its eight established international schools are spread across nearly all of it, and only one crossing connects the two provinces. That is what this guide is now built around.
The drive is the decision -- and we had it wrong
An earlier version of this page told readers that "Phang Nga town, near the Sarasin Bridge crossing into Phuket, is under an hour from central Phuket", and set Khao Lak against it as the impractical option. Phang Nga town is neither of those things. It is roughly 87 km from Phuket -- about an hour and a half via Highway 402 -- and the Sarasin Bridge is about 30 km away from it, down at Khok Kloi in Takua Thung district. Our own Phang Nga areas guide already put Khok Kloi and Natai Beach roughly 25 minutes from Phuket International Airport, so the two pages contradicted each other and this one named the wrong base as the commutable one.
Corrected, the province sorts cleanly by how far each area sits from the bridge:
| Where you live | Distance from the crossing | Is a daily school run realistic? |
|---|---|---|
| Natai Beach & Khok Kloi (Takua Thung) | The bridge is on the doorstep; roughly 25 minutes to Phuket airport | Yes, for a north-Phuket school. This is the only part of the province where a daily run to UWC is a normal commute rather than an endurance exercise. Note the trade-off: the housing stock here is largely resort and villa rental rather than standard monthly leases. |
| Thai Mueang (its own district, north of Takua Thung) | Between Khok Kloi and Khao Lak on Highway 4 | Marginal. Longer than Khok Kloi, shorter than Khao Lak. Measure it before you commit. |
| Phang Nga town (Mueang Phang Nga) | ~30 km inland from the bridge; ~87 km and about 1.5 hours to Phuket | No, despite what most guides imply. The capital is the province's cheapest and most Thai place to live and it has real local schools -- but it is not the international-school commute base. |
| Khao Lak (Takua Pa) | About an hour north of Phuket airport, so well over an hour to any school | Not daily. Khao Lak has the province's largest long-stay foreign community and the least workable school run -- which is precisely why the boarding section below matters most to Khao Lak families. |
| Khura Buri (northern tip) | Further north again, toward the Ranong border | No. Not a commute proposition in any form. |
Times above are indicative and derived from published route distances and our own area research, not from measured door-to-door school runs. Highway 402 across the Sarasin Bridge is the only road crossing between the provinces and it is the bottleneck in every one of these journeys -- drive your actual route at 07:00 on a school day before you sign a lease.
Phuket's eight international schools, north to south
This page previously named three. Phuket has eight established international schools on BAANLYY's own researched roster, and for a Phang Nga family the order below -- by distance from the bridge -- is the only ordering that means anything. Two of the eight are in Rawai at the far southern tip of the island; from Khao Lak that is a different universe from UWC in Thalang.
1. UWC Thailand
Where: Thepkasattri, Thalang -- the north of the island, about ten minutes from Phuket International Airport
Curriculum: The full IB continuum, Pre-Kindergarten to Grade 12 (PYP, MYP, Diploma). The school reports around 580 students, 75-plus national identities, an average class of 18 and a 1:6 teacher-to-student ratio.
Boarding: Day and boarding, in on-campus houses with resident houseparents -- but boarding is Grades 9-12 only. See the boarding section below; this is the single most misreported fact about UWC.
The cross-province run: The shortest international-school run in the province. Our Phang Nga areas guide puts Natai/Khok Kloi roughly 25 minutes from Phuket airport, and UWC is about ten minutes further south, so a Khok Kloi or Natai base sits inside roughly 35-40 minutes of the gate. That is an arithmetic of two published figures, not a measured door-to-door time -- drive it yourself at 07:00 before you sign anything.
2. British International School, Phuket (BISP)
Where: Koh Kaew, Muang -- just north of Phuket Town, on the island's east side
Curriculum: British National Curriculum to IGCSE, then a sixth form offering the IB Diploma, A-Levels or a Pearson BTEC route. Around 1,140 students aged 2-18 from more than 56 nationalities, on the school's own reporting.
Boarding: Full and weekly boarding in staffed houses with an on-site nurse and structured weekend activities -- the largest boarding operation on the island, and it takes children younger than UWC does.
The cross-province run: Past the airport and roughly half the length of the island further on. Realistic as a weekly-boarding or full-boarding school from a Phang Nga base; a daily run from Khao Lak is not a serious proposition.
3. HeadStart International School
Where: Two campuses -- Chaofah City (Vichit, near Phuket Town) and Cherngtalay in the north-west
Curriculum: English National Curriculum to Cambridge IGCSE, then A-Level or BTEC pathways.
Boarding: Day school -- no boarding at either campus.
The cross-province run: The Cherngtalay campus is the more reachable of the two from the bridge; Chaofah City is a Phuket Town-side run. With no boarding anywhere in the school, HeadStart only works from Phang Nga if you are genuinely prepared to drive it twice a day.
4. Kajonkiet International School, Phuket (KIS Phuket)
Where: Kathu -- a quiet valley roughly 15 minutes from Phuket Town, mid-island
Curriculum: See the full profile for the current pathway and authorisations.
Boarding: Day school -- no boarding.
The cross-province run: Mid-island and west of the spine. No boarding, so the same daily-drive test applies.
5. QSI International School of Phuket
Where: Kathu, between Phuket Town and Patong
Curriculum: See the full profile for the current pathway and authorisations.
Boarding: Day school -- no boarding.
The cross-province run: Mid-island. No boarding.
6. Berda Claude International School, Phuket (BCIS)
Where: Chalong, Muang -- south Phuket
Curriculum: See the full profile for the current pathway and authorisations.
Boarding: Day school -- no boarding.
The cross-province run: South of Phuket Town. From the bridge this is close to the full length of the island. Not a daily run from anywhere in Phang Nga.
7. International School of Phuket (ISP)
Where: Rawai -- the far south of the island
Curriculum: Note from the Phuket run: ISP stops at Key Stage 3 (age 14), with no IGCSE year and no sixth form, so families must plan a second school.
Boarding: Day school -- no boarding.
The cross-province run: The far southern tip. Effectively the whole island plus the bridge. Not a daily run from Phang Nga.
8. Lighthouse International School Phuket
Where: Rawai (Primary and Secondary), with a Kindergarten in Chalong
Curriculum: See the full profile. The Rawai campus only opened in 2024, so year groups are still filling.
Boarding: Day school -- no boarding.
The cross-province run: Far south, same as ISP. Not a daily run from Phang Nga.
Full profiles, accreditations and honest per-school caveats live in the Phuket schools guide. BAANLYY does not publish per-school fees anywhere: they change annually and third-party directories routinely disagree with the schools' own published figures.
Boarding is the answer -- but read the age floor first
Boarding is the option that lets a family keep its base in Khao Lak or Phang Nga town while a child attends school in Phuket. Only two of the eight schools offer it, and their age floors differ in a way that decides the question outright.
UWC Thailand boards Grades 9-12 only. Its own boarding FAQ poses the question -- "Can younger students (below Grade 9) apply?" -- and answers it flatly: "No -- boarding options are currently available for Grades 9-12 only." If your child is below secondary age, UWC boarding is not available to you, however close the campus is to the bridge. BISP runs the island's largest boarding operation and takes children younger; third-party directories report boarding from Year 4, which we have not confirmed against the school's own admissions pages, so confirm the minimum year directly with BISP rather than relying on a directory. For a primary-age child, boarding in Phuket currently rests on BISP alone.
Day boarding and occasional boarding -- the fact worth the whole page
Almost no relocation guide mentions this, and for a cross-province family it is the most useful thing on this page. Alongside full boarding, UWC Thailand publishes Day Boarding and Occasional Boarding for its Grades 9-12 students. Day Boarders do not sleep at school: they join the boarding community after lessons for co-curricular activities, supervised study and shared meals -- breakfast, lunch, snacks and dinner -- and are supervised until a 9:00 pm collection. Occasional Boarders stay overnight on selected nights, and families may request a regular routine, such as every Wednesday.
Read that against the table above. Day boarding turns two bridge crossings a day into one evening drive. Occasional boarding turns a week of them into a Monday-to-Thursday stay with the child home for the weekend. Both are the difference between "Khao Lak is impossible with a teenager" and "Khao Lak works". The honest caveats, in the school's own terms: places are limited and allocated first-come, first-served at the Director of Boarding's discretion; rooming for occasional boarders depends on availability; fees are paid in advance and are non-refundable; and laundry is included for overnight boarders but not for day boarders. School-arranged transport exists for weekend trips and school activities -- it is not a daily ride home.
The school bus does not cross the bridge
In several Thai cities the school bus catchment is what makes an outlying town liveable -- one school in Hua Hin runs a door-to-door network stretching across two provinces. Phang Nga families should assume the opposite. UWC Thailand's own School Bus page says the service "stops off at certain areas along the west coast of Phuket" and that "the route depends on the level of interest in this service." Two things follow: it is an island-only service, and in any given year it may not run to a given area at all. No Phuket school bus route reaching into Phang Nga could be verified for this guide. Plan a Phang Nga school run as your own vehicle, every day, unless a school tells you otherwise in writing.
What's actually available inside Phang Nga
This page used to say BAANLYY "has not compiled a verified list of individual schools to name here" -- a vague row where named schools belong. Here are the two Phang Nga government schools we could verify as publishing an English stream, both in the provincial capital.
Deebuk Phang-nga Wittayayon School
โรงเรียนดีบุกพังงาวิทยายน
The provincial capital's main government secondary school, and the one Phang Nga school BAANLYY could verify as running an English stream at secondary level -- a Mini English Program (MEP), which it promotes under that name on its own social channels. MEP is not EP: it is a smaller number of subjects taught in English rather than a substantially English timetable, and the two are routinely conflated in relocation guides. Ask the school which subjects are actually taught in English this academic year, and by whom.
Anuban Phang Nga School
โรงเรียนอนุบาลพังงา
The capital's main government primary school, which publishes an English Program and Foreign Language Department. This is the realistic local primary route for a family basing itself in Phang Nga town rather than commuting to Phuket.
Cost is not access. The most common mistake in relocation guides is to present Thai English Program streams as the affordable answer without saying how you get in. EP and MEP places are awarded by entrance examination on a fixed annual timetable, and the examination is generally sat in Thai. That closes the route to many newly-arrived foreign children regardless of what the family can pay. Ask about the examination date and the language of the paper before you build a plan around it.
Ordinary Thai-medium government schools operate throughout the province -- in Phang Nga town, Takua Pa, Thai Mueang, Kapong and the other district centres -- and are a genuine choice for families prioritising local integration over an international curriculum. We name only the two above because those are the two whose English provision we could verify from the schools' own channels; we would rather name two real ones than list ten unchecked.
Yaowawit School, Kapong
Phang Nga's one internationally-connected school is worth knowing about properly, because search results surface it constantly and misdescribe it. Yaowawit School is a government-approved public-welfare boarding school in Kapong district, founded in the aftermath of the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and officially opened by HRH Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn on 24 April 2006. It was founded by Philipp Graf von Hardenberg and is funded by partners and donors internationally through the Children's World Academy Foundation, providing education and living support to children from underprivileged families. It sits in the rainforest outside the village of Kapong, roughly two hours north of Phuket.
It is a real, well-documented and genuinely valuable institution. It is not an international-curriculum school that a relocating expat family would enrol a child into, and any guide that lists it as Phang Nga's "international school option" has misread what it is. We include it as context, and as a correction to that misreading.
Schools that do not exist
A province with no international school is exactly the kind of place where AI-generated listicles invent one. In researching this page, a search result asserted a "Grace International School" in Phang Nga. There is no such school: Grace International School is in Chiang Mai, and a separate Bangkok Grace International School is in Bangkok. Searches for a "Khao Lak International School" return a real Khao Lak Language School in Khuekkhak, Takua Pa -- a language school for adults and visitors, not a K-12 international school, and the two are easy to conflate at a glance.
The three-part test BAANLYY applies to any school name you are given for this province: does it have its own website on its own domain; does it publish a findable street address you can put in a map; and does the phone number answer. A school that fails all three is a listicle artefact, and enrolling a child is not the moment to discover that.
Confirm these before you commit -- every time
- Drive the actual route at 07:00 on a school day, from the house you are considering to the school gate -- not the distance, and not a mid-morning drive. Highway 402 across the Sarasin Bridge is the single crossing point, and it is the whole journey's bottleneck.
- Whether the school bus reaches your side of the bridge at all. Every Phuket school bus BAANLYY could verify runs on Phuket island only -- see the school bus section below.
- The minimum age or year group for boarding, if boarding is your plan. It differs sharply between the two schools that offer it, and the difference decides whether boarding is available to your child at all this year.
- Whether the year group you need has a place, or a waitlist, for your intended start date -- and whether that year group is actually staffed and filled.
- The current fee schedule, direct from the school. BAANLYY does not publish per-school fees: they change annually and third-party directories routinely disagree with the school's own figures by tens of thousands of baht.
- How far the school takes your child. At least one Phuket school stops at age 14, which means planning a second move mid-education.
- For a Thai government school: the entrance route. English Program and Mini English Program streams admit by examination on a fixed timetable, usually sat in Thai, which is a barrier that has nothing to do with the fee.
Phang Nga schools FAQ
Is there an international school in Phang Nga?
No. No established, fee-paying international day or boarding school operates in Phang Nga province, and this is not merely BAANLYY's impression -- two independent censuses agree. Wikipedia's 'List of international schools in Thailand' files every school by province and lists none under Phang Nga, and the international-schools-database and doris directories return schools for Phuket, Krabi and Koh Lanta but none inside Phang Nga. The one notable Phang Nga-based institution, Yaowawit School in Kapong, is a government-approved public-welfare boarding school for underprivileged Thai children -- a genuinely valuable institution, but not a school a relocating family enrols into.
How far is Phang Nga from Phuket's international schools?
Further than most guides say, and it depends entirely on which corner of the province you are in. Phang Nga town is roughly 87 km from Phuket -- about an hour and a half via Highway 402 -- and it is not near the Sarasin Bridge: the bridge is about 30 km away from it, at Khok Kloi in Takua Thung district. The genuinely commutable part of the province is Khok Kloi and Natai Beach, which sit roughly 25 minutes from Phuket International Airport. From there, UWC Thailand in Thalang is inside roughly 35-40 minutes. Khao Lak is about an hour north of the airport again, so a Khao Lak-to-Phuket school run is well over an hour each way. Khura Buri, at the province's northern tip, is not a daily-commute proposition at all.
Which Phuket school is actually closest to Phang Nga?
UWC Thailand, in Thepkasattri, Thalang -- about ten minutes south of Phuket International Airport and therefore the first international school you reach after crossing the Sarasin Bridge. Phuket island runs roughly 50 km north to south and its eight established international schools are spread across nearly all of it, so 'a school in Phuket' can mean a 35-minute run or a two-hour one from the same Phang Nga house. Two of the eight -- ISP and Lighthouse -- are in Rawai at the far southern tip.
Do Phuket school buses collect from Phang Nga?
Not on any route BAANLYY could verify. UWC Thailand's own School Bus page states that the bus 'stops off at certain areas along the west coast of Phuket' and that 'the route depends on the level of interest in this service' -- so it is island-only, and in a given year it may not run to a given area at all. Treat a Phang Nga school run as your own car until a school tells you otherwise in writing.
Do any Phuket international schools offer boarding, and from what age?
Two do, and the age floors are different in a way that decides the question for many families. UWC Thailand's own boarding FAQ answers the question 'Can younger students (below Grade 9) apply?' with a flat 'No -- boarding options are currently available for Grades 9-12 only.' British International School Phuket runs the island's largest boarding operation and takes children younger than that; third-party directories report boarding from Year 4, which BAANLYY has not confirmed against the school's own admissions pages, so confirm the minimum year directly with BISP. If your child is below secondary age and boarding was your plan, that plan currently rests on BISP alone.
What is 'day boarding' and why does it matter from Phang Nga?
It is the most useful and least-known option for a cross-province family, and UWC Thailand publishes it explicitly. Alongside full boarding, UWC offers Day Boarding and Occasional Boarding to its Grades 9-12 students. Day Boarders are not overnight residents: they join the boarding community after school for co-curricular activities, supervised study and meals -- breakfast, lunch, snacks and dinner -- and are supervised until a 9:00 pm collection. Occasional Boarders stay overnight on selected nights, and families may request a regular routine such as every Wednesday. For a family in Khok Kloi or Khao Lak that converts a twice-daily bridge crossing into one evening drive, or into a Monday-to-Thursday stay with the child home for the weekend. Places are limited, allocated first-come first-served at the Director of Boarding's discretion, and fees are paid in advance and non-refundable -- so book early and ask about availability before you plan a move around it.
Are there local Thai schools in Phang Nga with an English stream?
Yes, and BAANLYY can now name them rather than gesturing at 'government schools'. Deebuk Phang-nga Wittayayon School, the capital's main government secondary school, runs a Mini English Program (MEP). Anuban Phang Nga School, the capital's main government primary, publishes an English Program and Foreign Language Department. Two cautions. First, MEP is not EP -- it is a smaller number of subjects taught in English, and the two are constantly conflated. Second, cost is not access: Thai EP and MEP streams admit by entrance examination on a fixed annual timetable, usually sat in Thai, which closes the route to many newly-arrived foreign children regardless of budget.
What is Yaowawit School in Kapong?
A government-approved public-welfare boarding school in Kapong district, founded in the aftermath of the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and officially opened by HRH Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn on 24 April 2006. It was founded by Philipp Graf von Hardenberg and is funded by partners and donors internationally through the Children's World Academy Foundation, providing education and living support to children from underprivileged families. It is roughly two hours north of Phuket, outside the village of Kapong. It is a real and well-documented institution -- and it is not an international-curriculum school that a relocating expat family would enrol a child into, which is why it appears here as context rather than as an option.
International schools near Phang Nga
International schools in and around Phang Nga, ordered by distance from the city centre and sourced live from Google Maps. Ratings and review counts update automatically — tap any name for directions, hours and contact details.
Distances are straight-line from the city centre, for rough comparison only. Listings are provided by Google and are not endorsements. BAANLYY does not manage these businesses.
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.
Related guides
Phang Nga hub · Phang Nga areas · Where to live in Phang Nga · Getting around Phang Nga · Phuket schools guide · Phuket hub
Relocating to Phang Nga with kids?
Match your family's school plan to the right area before you commit to a home.
Hero photo by Yan Krukau on Pexels. General information only, not educational or admissions advice -- confirm current fees, curriculum, admissions requirements, boarding age floors and place availability directly with each school before making a decision. Drive times are indicative and derived from published route distances, not from measured door-to-door school runs.
