Schools & universities in Phichit.

The provincial flagship, and the school a family moving to Phichit town will actually be choosing between. It stands at 31 Phichit–Kamphaeng Phet Road, Tambon Nai Mueang, Mueang Phichit — a town-centre address, walking distance from the hospital and the station. Its origins run back to a first school building erected in 1900 known as Rom Phikun School; the present school was formed on 1 August 1972 when the Department of General Education merged the boys' school with the girls' school, Satri Phichit "Phichi Kanlayani", under the single name Phichit Pittayakom. It teaches the full M.1–M.6 range and runs selective special classrooms — an SMTE stream (science, mathematics, technology and environment) and a Science–Mathematics–English "Special Program" — both with live, dated intake announcements on the school's own site, the SMTE one for the 2569 (2026) intake. Instruction is in Thai throughout.

Phichit's second town has its own long-established state secondary school: Taphan Hin School, founded on 1 June 1951 and sitting at 221 Chomtheerawet Road in Tambon Taphan Hin, about 28 rail-kilometres south of the capital. It matters for the same reason the hospital there matters — a family based in the southern half of the province does not have to send a teenager up to Mueang Phichit every day. Bang Mun Nak, the third town, anchors its own cluster of schools further south again.

Phichit has its own Secondary Educational Service Area Office (สพม.พิจิตร), rather than sharing one with a neighbouring province, and it administers 30 secondary schools grouped into four clusters: Mueang Phichit (7 schools), Sam Ngam (8), Taphan Hin (7) and Bang Mun Nak (8). That is the number worth planning around. It sits below the raw provincial statistics — 184 primary schools with around 31,258 pupils, 90 lower-secondary with around 17,137 and 35 upper-secondary with around 10,546 — because those counts include primary schools that carry extension classes rather than standalone secondary schools. Both figures are true; only one of them tells you where a fourteen-year-old actually goes.

Provincial statistics record five vocational colleges with roughly 4,305 students between them, and that count folds in institutions that no longer exist under those names. Three government colleges can be named and located from first-party sources today. Phichit Technical College sits at 33 Phichit–Kamphaeng Phet Road in Mueang — effectively next door to Phichit Pittayakom. Phichit College of Agriculture and Technology is at 94 Moo 6, Tambon Sam Ngam, Amphoe Sam Ngam, on a campus of some 523 rai teaching crop production, livestock, agricultural mechanics and agribusiness; its size is not decorative, it reflects what the provincial economy actually is. And the third is the one this guide had been calling by a retired name — see the card below. Pho Thale Industrial and Community Education College should not be counted here at all: it was raised to community-college status and is the body now called Phichit Community College, so listing it as a separate vocational college double-counts it. Vocational study is a far more common post-school route here than university.

This college has been through three names and BAANLYY was using the second of them. From its own history page: it was founded on 1 June 1982 as Phichit Polytechnic School and first taught in the third term of the 1984 academic year, running 225-hour short vocational courses open to the general public; the Ministry of Education raised it to Phichit Polytechnic College on 7 June 1991; it began teaching the vocational certificate (Por Wor Chor) in the 1994 academic year and the high vocational certificate (Por Wor Sor) in 1999; and on 21 December 2021 a Ministry of Education renaming announcement made it Phichit Vocational College, the name it uses today. It stands at 316 Busaba Road, Tambon Nai Mueang, Mueang Phichit 66000 (0-5661-3481) on six rai of treasury land about three kilometres from the provincial government centre — bounded by the Nan River to the north, Anuban Tha Luang Songkhro School to the east, Busaba Road to the south and Wat Tha Luang, the province's royal temple, to the west. That is a town-centre address, walkable from the old riverside quarter. It teaches auto mechanics, metal welding, electrical power, basic technics and digital business technology on the industrial side; accounting and marketing/retail on the business side; food and nutrition; and a broad short-course menu including fashion and textiles, home economics, music, fine arts, barbering and hairdressing, automotive servicing, and refrigeration and air conditioning.

The province does have a state higher-education institution, and it is worth naming rather than leaving as a statistic: Phichit Community College, a government body under the Institute of Community Colleges (Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation), teaching roughly 2,279 students. It grew out of Pho Thale Industrial and Community Education College, which first taught in the 1997 academic year, and was raised to community-college status on 17 April 2002 — Phichit was one of the first ten provinces selected, under a policy that deliberately targeted provinces with no university of their own. The Institutes of Community Colleges Act of 2015 made it a formal government division. Its main campus is at 150 Moo 6, Bang Mun Nak–Pho Thale Road, Tambon Tha Bua, Amphoe Pho Thale — the far south of the province, not the capital — on over 120 rai, and it teaches at four levels: vocational certificate, high vocational certificate, associate degree and short courses, through twelve teaching units spread across the province including Thap Khlo, Pho Prathap Chang, Mueang Kao, Sam Ngam and Sak Lek. Short courses are charged by the hour at a nominal rate.

There is no national university campus in Phichit, and students wanting a full degree overwhelmingly leave — Naresuan University in Phitsanulok is the obvious destination an hour north, with Phetchabun Rajabhat and Pibulsongkram Rajabhat also drawing from here. The one real exception runs through the hospital rather than a campus: the Clinical Medical Education Centre at Phichit Hospital, approved by cabinet resolution on 15 June 2004 and teaching from 18 March 2005, delivers the clinical years (4–6) of Naresuan University's medical degree under the national CPIRD rural-doctor programme. So Phichit does have university-level teaching — it just happens on a hospital ward rather than in a faculty building.

Two checks that matter to anyone planning to keep studying while living here, and they land on opposite sides. Mahachulalongkornrajavidyalaya University, the state monastic university, does have a presence: its Nakhon Sawan campus lists an academic service unit in this province at Wat Phruksawan Chotikaram, 100/1 Phruksawan Road, Tambon Ngio Rai, Amphoe Taphan Hin 66110 — which is to say in Phichit's second town, the same town as Taphan Hin School above, rather than in the capital. The campus page publishes the address and nothing more, so what is currently taught at the Phichit unit is a question for the campus directly; the parent campus itself teaches Buddhist studies, a four-year social studies teaching degree, political science, public administration and law. Ramkhamhaeng University, Thailand's main open university and the usual route to a Thai degree for someone already working, is the opposite: Phichit is not one of its 23 regional campuses — the nearest are Sukhothai, Phetchabun and Uthai Thani — and it is not one of the 41 regional examination centres either, so a distance student living here would register and sit finals out of province, most practically at the Phitsanulok centre about an hour north or the Nakhon Sawan centre further south. That enumeration comes from a published compilation rather than from Ramkhamhaeng's own register, and centres are revised year to year, so confirm against the university's current registration manual before relying on it.

BAANLYY has not identified a genuine full international-curriculum school (IB, British or American through to secondary) anywhere in Phichit, and will not imply one exists. Searching in Thai as well as English returns no โรงเรียนนานาชาติ for the province, so this is a negative we have actively tested rather than assumed. One clarification, because it catches people out: Phichit Pittayakom's Science–Mathematics–English "Special Program" is a selective Thai-medium enrichment stream, not an English Program (EP) and not an international curriculum — the school does not teach the national curriculum in English. Families who need an international track should plan around Phitsanulok an hour north for the nearest options, and realistically around Chiang Mai or Bangkok for depth of choice. If international schooling is non-negotiable for your family, Phichit is not the right province, and it is better to know that now.