Schools & universities in Phitsanulok.

The lower north's flagship public research university, with its main campus in Tha Pho about 10km south of the city on Highway 117, a medical school and its own university hospital. NU was created on 29 July 1990 — the 400th anniversary of King Naresuan's accession — by upgrading Srinakharinwirot University's Phitsanulok campus, which itself grew out of the College of Education opened here in the 1960s. King Bhumibol had granted the name on 9 October 1989. It is the second state university in northern Thailand after Chiang Mai and the seventeenth in the country, and it drives much of Phitsanulok's rental market and cafe culture. We do not publish a total enrolment figure here: the numbers in circulation range from about 20,000 to over 34,000 and none is currently sourced to the university's own published statistics.

A public rajabhat university on two city sites: the main Thale Kaeo campus at 156 Moo 5, Phlai Chumphon, across the Nan north-west of the centre, and the older riverside Wang Chan campus at 66 Wang Chan Road in Nai Mueang. PSRU carries the province's oldest higher-education lineage — teacher training was added to the Phitsanulok monthon school in 1921, after the Compulsory Primary Education Act created a nationwide shortage of teachers. It is strong in education, humanities and applied fields, and the university is currently building a new learning-innovation and Faculty of Education building at Thale Kaeo, so confirm which campus a given faculty teaches on before you choose where to live.

A full RMUTL campus at 52 Moo 7, Ban Krang, Mueang, on 572 rai — routinely missed by guides that name only NU and PSRU. It teaches three faculties: Engineering, Business Administration and Liberal Arts, and Science and Agricultural Technology, with a stated specialism in safe agriculture. Its lineage is the longest continuous technical one in the province: Phitsanulok Agricultural School, built from 1953; raised to Phitsanulok Agricultural College in 1966; absorbed into the College of Technology and Vocational Education in 1975 and renamed Phitsanulok Agricultural Campus from the 1977 academic year; renamed simply Phitsanulok Campus in 1988 when King Bhumibol granted the name Rajamangala Institute of Technology; and part of RMUTL since the 2005 Act that created the nine Rajamangala universities.

At 90/6 Sri Thammatraipidok Road in Nai Mueang, alongside Buddhachinaraj Hospital. It opened on 16 May 1949 as a School of Nursing, Midwifery and Public Health run with the hospital — the Ministry of Public Health's first nursing college outside Bangkok and its second nursing institution anywhere — and received its present royal name on 14 February 1994. It now sits within the Faculty of Nursing of Praboromarajchanok Institute and awards the Bachelor of Nursing Science. Teaching is in Thai.

Mahachulalongkornrajavidyalaya University's college for the lower north, on roughly 500 rai at 217 Moo 6, Ban Nong Phai Lom, Bueng Phra, about 17km from the city. It began on 12 February 1998 as a Faculty of Buddhism extension classroom inside Wat Phra Si Rattana Mahathat (Wat Yai), first teaching a bachelor's in philosophy that same academic year; it was raised to a college on 7 April 2005 and gazetted on 2 June 2005; and it moved out to the Bueng Phra campus in 2009, opening its new teaching building on 22 October 2009. It awards bachelor's degrees in philosophy, Buddhism, English, social studies, Thai language teaching and public administration, plus a master's in Buddhist studies — and five of the bachelor's tracks are open to lay students, not only to monks and novices.

The institute's head office is in Phitsanulok itself, at 410 Moo 1, Phitsanulok–Bueng Phra Road, Bueng Phra (055-337611). It is not a college but a degree-awarding body: it runs continuing Bachelor of Technology programmes taught inside its member colleges, which is the route by which a vocational diploma holder reaches a bachelor's degree without leaving the region. Phitsanulok Vocational College, in the city, teaches at all three levels. Admission rounds are published on the institute's own site each academic year.

Phitsanulok does have a genuine international school, and it is worth naming rather than glossing over: New Cambridge International School, established 2011 at 458/1 Moo 3, Phitsanulok–Uttaradit Road, Samo Khae, about 15 minutes from the city centre and close to the airport. It teaches a British curriculum — Key Stage 3 for ages 11 to 14 and IGCSE for ages 14 to 16 — as a day and boarding school with its own dormitory and sports facilities. Read the boundary carefully: on the school's own description the programme stops at IGCSE, so there is no international primary or kindergarten track here and no sixth form or A-level year. Note also that school-directory sites still list a 'Cambridge College (Thailand)' at exactly this address, quoting primary-school fees; the school's own site publishes only Key Stage 3 and IGCSE, so confirm current year groups directly before you plan around a listing.

Founded in 2005 at 1 Sanambin Road in Mueang as the teaching-practice school of NU's Faculty of Education, admitting at M.1 and M.4 by competitive examination. It is the demonstration school we have verified directly. Phitsanulok also has a large and well-regarded Thai government secondary sector and further bilingual and demonstration provision that we have not individually checked this year — we would rather say so than publish a list we have not confirmed. Check each school's own admissions page for current year groups, English-programme streams and fees.