The honest short version
Songkhla city is a historic Gulf-coast provincial capital, not an international-school hub, and as of 2026 there is no licensed international school inside Amphoe Mueang Songkhla. Every international school serving this province is in Hat Yai, roughly 30 km inland: Bloomsbury International School Hatyai (British, CIS-accredited, to A-Level), Southern International School Hat Yai (British, to A-Level) and American Prep International School (American, published to Grade 6). Inside Songkhla city itself there is Punyakhun School, a private English-immersion primary running Nursery to Grade 6, and — the part almost every guide omits — the English streams inside the city's two big government secondary schools, Mahavajiravudh and Woranari Chaloem, which teach English through native speakers at state-school cost and exit on the Thai certificate.
The single most useful fact here is not on any directory listing: Bloomsbury boards from Year 5, on any night of the week, full or flexible. That reframes the whole decision. The Songkhla question has always been posed as "commute 30 km each way, or move to Hat Yai". There is a third answer, and for many families it is the cheapest one.
Where each school stops
Three of the six options below end at roughly age eleven or twelve. Read this table before you read a single curriculum description — an age ceiling ends a conversation that a curriculum preference only shapes.
| School | Where it is | Ends at | Leaves with | Boards? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Punyakhun School of Songkhla | Songkhla city | Grade 6 (~11) | None — a school record, not a qualification | No |
| Mahavajiravudh (EGL) | Songkhla city — Old Town | Mathayom 6 (~18) | Thai upper-secondary certificate | No |
| Woranari Chaloem (EP/GP) | Songkhla city | Mathayom 6 (~18) | Thai upper-secondary certificate | No |
| American Prep (APIS) | Central Hat Yai | Grade 6 published (~11) — confirm | US pathway; no leaving qualification at Grade 6 | No |
| Southern International (SIH) | Central Hat Yai | Year 13 (18) | iGCSE then A-Level (Oxford AQA / Cambridge) | No |
| Bloomsbury International | Hat Yai — airport corridor | Year 13 (18) | IGCSE then A-Level (Cambridge / Oxford AQA) | Yes — from Year 5, by the night |
You may not have to move to Hat Yai
Bloomsbury International School Hatyai states that boarding is open from Year 5 to Year 13 and is available on any night of the week, Monday to Sunday, on both full and flexible terms. Boarders have a common room, dining room and fitness room, and the school runs weekend trips. For a family living in Songkhla Old Town or by Samila Beach, that converts a 60 km round trip every school day into a question about how many nights a week a child sleeps in Hat Yai — and it means you can keep a Songkhla home, a Songkhla life and a full British pathway to A-Level at the same time.
Two honest caveats. First, "available any night" is the school's statement about availability, not about price — ask for the flexible-night fee structure and any minimum commitment before you plan a household around it. Second, boarding starts at Year 5, so it does nothing for a family with a five-year-old, which is exactly the age at which Punyakhun and the Hat Yai primaries matter most.
What's actually inside Songkhla city
| School | Type & where | What we can verify |
|---|---|---|
| Punyakhun School of Songkhla | Private English-immersion primary (Nursery–Grade 6), by the provincial stadium | The only private English-medium school we can independently place inside Songkhla city. Reported as founded in 2013, it runs a flexible British curriculum as an English Immersion Programme on the Eduseeds framework, from Nursery to Grade 6. It is not an international school in the licensing sense — it is a private Thai school teaching through English — and it has no secondary programme, so a family enrolling a five-year-old is committing to a second decision at eleven. It runs no website of its own; its public presence is a Facebook page, where it also posts as Punyakhun British School of Songkhla. |
| Anuban Songkhla (ABSK) | Government kindergarten (ages ~3–6), Bo Yang, Amphoe Mueang Songkhla | The city's historic government kindergarten, first opened in 1943 in Bo Yang, teaching in Thai at public-school cost. It is not an English-medium option and we do not present it as one — it is included here because it is a real, licensed early-years setting physically inside Songkhla city, and because a guide that lists only English-medium options gives a false picture of what the city actually has. Covered in more depth in our Songkhla childcare guide. |
| Mahavajiravudh Songkhla School — EGL stream | Government secondary (M1–M6), 19 Ratchadamnoen Rd, Bo Yang (Old Town) | The province's flagship state secondary school, and the largest concentration of native-English-speaker teaching inside Songkhla city — a fact almost no English-language relocation guide carries. Its EGL classroom (ห้องเรียนส่งเสริมความเป็นเลิศด้านภาษาอังกฤษ, English Gifted Learners) adds English subjects and a second foreign language to the Thai national core curriculum, with English taught by native-speaker teachers alongside Thai staff, CEFR/TOEIC/TOEFL/IELTS benchmarking and an Oxford computer-adaptive CEFR test. Capped at 36 per class, entered at M1 and M4 only, and gated on a grade-point average of at least 3.00 overall and in English. The leaving qualification is the Thai certificate, not IGCSE. |
| Woranari Chaloem School — EP and language streams | Government secondary (M1–M6), Amphoe Mueang Songkhla | The city's other large government secondary school, also under the Songkhla-Satun secondary service area, and the second public English route inside Songkhla city. A programme page published under the school's own name lists an English Program (EP) and a Gifted Program at M1–M3, and special classrooms pairing English with French, Chinese (CEP), Japanese and Korean at M4–M6. Read that with care: that page was last touched in 2011, and the school's current site and its special-classroom admissions system both returned an empty page to us, so we can confirm the streams exist as published but not which of them are running this year. Ask the school which classrooms it is actually opening for your child's entry year. |
| Thaksin University — International College | Public university, tertiary / English-medium programmes, Songkhla campus | Not a K-12 option, but a genuinely English-medium college on Thaksin University's Songkhla campus in Mueang Songkhla — relevant for families with university-age children, alongside Songkhla Rajabhat University nearby. Distinct from Thaksin University's demonstration secondary school, which is on the university's separate Phatthalung campus in another province entirely. |
Full profiles: Punyakhun School of Songkhla Mahavajiravudh Songkhla School (EGL) Songkhla childcare & nurseries
The English streams nobody writes about
Songkhla city has no expatriate beachhead of the kind that produces international schools, so its English-medium capacity was built by the public sector for Thai families instead — which is precisely why English-language relocation guides miss it. Two large government secondary schools in Mueang Songkhla run named English streams.
Mahavajiravudh Songkhla School, on Ratchadamnoen Road in the Old Town, runs EGL — ห้องเรียนส่งเสริมความเป็นเลิศด้านภาษาอังกฤษ, English Gifted Learners. It sits on the Thai Basic Education Core Curriculum B.E. 2551 and adds English subjects and a second foreign language, with English taught by native-speaker teachers alongside Thai staff. Students are entered for CEFR, TOEIC, TOEFL and IELTS, and sit an Oxford computer-adaptive CEFR test; the programme works with the Faculty of Liberal Arts at Prince of Songkla University and at Rajamangala University of Technology Srivijaya. Classes are capped at 36. The school also runs SMA, SMA Pre-Medical, SMTE, LP, CAP and MP special classrooms alongside it.
Woranari Chaloem School is the city's other large government secondary. A programme page published under the school's own name lists an English Program (EP) and a Gifted Program at Mathayom 1–3, and special classrooms pairing English with French, Chinese (CEP), Japanese and Korean at Mathayom 4–6. We are reporting that carefully rather than confidently: that page was last updated in 2011, and both the school's current website and its special-classroom admissions system returned an empty page to us. The streams are published; which of them run in a given year is a question for the school.
The three international schools serving the province
| School | Curriculum & where | What we can verify |
|---|---|---|
| Bloomsbury International School Hatyai | British, EYFS → National Curriculum for England → Cambridge → IGCSE → A-Level. Kuanlung, on the airport corridor | The only CIS-accredited school in Hat Yai (accredited January 2022), a Cambridge school since 2016 and an Oxford International AQA centre since 2019, on a purpose-built campus out towards Hat Yai International Airport. It is also the only school in the province that boards — from Year 5, on any night of the week, on full or flexible terms. For a Songkhla family that single fact is worth more than everything else on this page: it means the choice is not only 'commute daily or move to Hat Yai'. |
| Southern International School Hat Yai (SIH) | British, Oxford International Curriculum EYFS→Y9, then iGCSE and A-Level via Oxford AQA and Cambridge. 789 Rajuthit Rd, central Hat Yai | The most central of the three, taking children from age 2 to 18 on Rajuthit Road in the middle of Hat Yai. Its structure is not the generic 'English National Curriculum' a directory listing implies: it runs the Oxford International Curriculum as a single spine from EYFS all the way to Year 9, and only at Key Stage 4 and 5 do students move to external examinations, entered through both Oxford AQA and Cambridge International. It holds the NDNA 'Quality Counts' mark at Platinum level for its early years. Day school — no boarding. |
| American Prep International School (APIS) | American, California Department of Education standards, blended and e-learning delivery. Central Hat Yai | The province's only American-curriculum school, open since August 2015, and until this revision entirely missing from this guide. It describes itself as a blended and e-learning school rather than a conventional campus school: middle-school students work from individual laptops carrying the prescribed e-books for their grade, and students sit NWEA MAP tests through the year. Its published range is Pre-K to Grade 6 and whether a middle school is running is a live question you must ask — see the note below. Day school — no boarding. Do not confuse it with American Pacific International School in Chiang Mai, which also goes by APIS and does board. |
Full profiles: Bloomsbury International School Hatyai Southern International School Hat Yai American Prep International School Full Hat Yai schools guide
A school we removed: "Songkhla International School"
Until this revision, this guide named Songkhla International School as one of the three international schools serving the area, with a registered address on Kanjanavanit Soi 9 in Hat Yai. We have removed it, and we would rather explain why than quietly delete a row.
We could not verify that it currently operates. It has no website. The only web presence we could find under that name is a WordPress blog with two posts, both dated November 2012. It appears in no current census of international schools in Songkhla province — those return Bloomsbury, Southern International and American Prep. And BAANLYY's own separately researched Hat Yai schools guide, which enumerates the city's international schools from their own sites, does not include it. The directory listings that do still carry the name reproduce the same self-description — the first and only fully licensed international school established in Songkhla province — a claim that would have to pre-date all three schools that are demonstrably running today.
We are not asserting the school never existed, and we are not asserting it is closed. We are saying we cannot find evidence it is open, and that we will not send a relocating family to a school we cannot find. The general test, which is worth applying to any school you meet in a directory rather than on its own website: does it have its own domain, a findable street address, and a telephone number that someone answers? If all three fail, treat the listing as a historical record, not an option.
Who this guide is for
Families actually relocating to Songkhla city with school-age children, families already in Hat Yai deciding whether Songkhla is livable, and bilingual or mixed Thai-foreign families weighing the government English streams against an international school in Hat Yai. It also covers university-age children, for whom Thaksin University's International College and Songkhla Rajabhat University are genuine local options.
When to start the process
The Thai academic year begins in May, and the two systems here run on different clocks. The Hat Yai international schools can usually take an enquiry at any point and will tell you honestly whether your child's year group has space — start two to three months before your move, earlier if you need a specific intake or a boarding place. The government English streams do not work that way at all: they are annual, examined, and announced months in advance, with selection typically falling early in the calendar year for a May start. If a government stream is genuinely in your plan, you are working to a fixed date roughly a year ahead, and missing it costs three years.
How to choose and enrol — step by step
What it costs
BAANLYY does not publish per-school tuition figures. They are revised every year, every school publishes its own current schedule, and a number printed here today would be wrong by next August — we have seen three directories quote three different current ranges for the same school elsewhere in Thailand, none of them the school's own.
What we can correct is the claim this page used to make, that none of these schools publish a fee schedule. That was wrong. Bloomsbury publishes a tuition-and-fees page, Southern International publishes fees within its admissions section, and American Prep publishes a tuition-and-fees page — all three are linked in the sources below. Mahavajiravudh publishes its EGL costs per semester, plus a separate annual activity contribution, on its own EGL page. The one school here that genuinely publishes nothing is Punyakhun, because it runs no website at all.
The order of magnitude is worth stating even though the figures are not: a state-school English stream and a CIS-accredited British school running to A-Level are not in the same financial universe, and the gap is measured in multiples rather than percentages. Budget separately for the things that are never in the headline number — enrolment and application fees, uniforms, lunches, transport or boarding, and trips.
Pros and cons
- Bloomsbury boards from Year 5 on flexible nightly terms — a Songkhla family can use a full British A-Level pathway without moving to Hat Yai or driving it daily
- Two of the three international schools serving the province run a complete pathway to A-Level on their own campuses, with no blended or distance-learning sixth form anywhere in the province
- Three curricula are available within a 30 km radius: British via Bloomsbury and SIH, American via APIS, and the Thai national curriculum with strong English streams inside Songkhla city
- Songkhla city's own government English streams are taught by native English speakers at state-school cost, and are genuinely good — they are simply gated academically rather than financially
- Punyakhun gives Songkhla city a real English-medium primary option with no Hat Yai commute for a young child
- Songkhla city is small and flat: nothing inside Mueang Songkhla is a long drive from anything else inside Mueang Songkhla
- There is no international school inside Songkhla city itself, and no realistic prospect of one
- Punyakhun stops at Grade 6 — every family using it needs a second plan by the time a child is eleven
- American Prep's published range also ends at Grade 6, so two of the province's English-medium options are primary-only
- The government English streams are entered at Mathayom 1 and Mathayom 4 only, by Thai-language competitive selection with a grade threshold — affordability is not admissibility
- The government streams exit on the Thai certificate, not IGCSE or A-Level, so they do not substitute for an international school if your child is heading to a foreign university
- There is no rail anywhere in Songkhla province; every school run is a car, a motorbike or a songthaew, and the Hat Yai run is a real cross-province drive
Common mistakes to avoid
Songkhla schools FAQ
Is there an international school in Songkhla city itself?
No. As of 2026 there is no licensed international school inside Amphoe Mueang Songkhla, and we would rather say that plainly than dress up something that is not one. Every international school serving this province — Bloomsbury, Southern International and American Prep — is in Hat Yai, roughly 30 km inland. What Songkhla city itself has is Punyakhun School, a private English-immersion primary running Nursery to Grade 6, and the English streams inside the two big government secondary schools.
Do we actually have to move to Hat Yai, or commute every day?
Neither, necessarily — and this is the most useful fact on the page. Bloomsbury International School Hatyai boards students from Year 5, and states that boarding is available on any night of the week, Monday to Sunday, on full or flexible terms. That turns the Songkhla-to-Hat-Yai question from a daily 30 km drive into a decision about how many nights a week your child stays over. A family can keep a home in Songkhla Old Town or by Samila Beach and still use a full British pathway to A-Level. Confirm the fee structure for flexible nights and any minimum commitment before you plan around it — 'available any night' is a statement about availability, not about price.
What happened to 'Songkhla International School'?
We removed it. Earlier versions of this guide listed it as one of the three international schools serving the area, with an address on Kanjanavanit Soi 9 in Hat Yai. We could not verify that it currently operates. It has no website; its only web presence we could find is a WordPress blog with two posts, both from November 2012; it appears in no current census of international schools in Songkhla province, which return Bloomsbury, Southern International and American Prep; and BAANLYY's own separately researched Hat Yai schools guide enumerates the city's international schools and does not include it. The listings that do carry it reproduce the same self-description — 'the first and only fully licensed international school established in Songkhla province' — which is a claim that would pre-date all three schools that are demonstrably operating now. We are not asserting it never existed. We are saying we cannot find evidence it is open, and we will not send a relocating family to a school we cannot find.
Are the government English streams a realistic option for a foreign family?
Sometimes, and the barrier is not money. Mahavajiravudh's EGL classroom and Woranari Chaloem's English Program are genuine, well-resourced, English-taught streams at state-school cost. But entry is annual and competitive, administered in Thai, at fixed entry points — Mathayom 1 and Mathayom 4 — and Mahavajiravudh publishes an academic threshold of a grade-point average of at least 3.00 overall and at least 3.00 in English. Everything outside the English subjects is taught in Thai. For a bilingual or mixed Thai-foreign family already settled here, these are excellent value. For a family arriving in July with a fourteen-year-old who does not read Thai, they are usually not available at any price.
What qualification does each school actually lead to?
This is the question that decides the shortlist, and it splits the province cleanly. Bloomsbury and Southern International both run a complete British pathway to IGCSE and A-Level on their own campuses in Hat Yai. American Prep teaches to California standards and its published range ends at Grade 6, so it is a stage, not a pathway. Punyakhun ends at Grade 6 with no external qualification at all. The government streams, however strong their English, exit on the Thai upper-secondary certificate — not IGCSE, not A-Level, not a US diploma. A cheaper school in Thailand is very often a different qualification rather than a discount on the same one.
Is the Demonstration School of Thaksin University a Songkhla option?
No, and it is a genuine and common mix-up. Thaksin University's demonstration secondary school (Mathayomsuksa 1–6) is on the university's Phatthalung campus in Pa Phayom District — a different province, over 100 km from Songkhla city — as its own official site confirms. Thaksin University's Songkhla campus in Mueang Songkhla hosts the International College and other faculties, but no K-12 demonstration school.
How much does school cost in Songkhla?
We do not publish per-school tuition figures — they are revised every year and anything we printed would be wrong by next August — but the earlier claim on this page that none of these schools publish a fee schedule was simply wrong, and we have removed it. Bloomsbury publishes a tuition-and-fees page, Southern International publishes fees within its admissions section, and American Prep publishes a tuition-and-fees page; all three are linked in the sources below. Mahavajiravudh publishes its EGL costs per semester on its own EGL page. Punyakhun is the one school here that genuinely publishes nothing, because it runs no website. The order of magnitude is worth stating even though the numbers are not: a state-school English stream and a CIS-accredited British school are not in the same financial universe.
This guide is general information for relocation planning, not admissions or financial advice. Curricula, fees, locations, entry ages and enrolment rules change — confirm current details directly with each school.
International schools near Songkhla
International schools in and around Songkhla, 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
- Ministry of Education, Thailand
- Punyakhun School of Songkhla — Facebook page (the school runs no website)
- Mahavajiravudh Songkhla School — official site
- Mahavajiravudh Songkhla School — EGL (English Gifted Learners) programme page
- Woranari Chaloem School — official site
- Woranari Chaloem School — programme list published under the school's name (page last updated 2011)
- Bloomsbury International School Hatyai — official site
- Bloomsbury International School Hatyai — tuition and fees
- Southern International School Hat Yai — official site
- Southern International School Hat Yai — admissions and fees
- American Prep International School, Hat Yai — official site
- American Prep International School, Hat Yai — tuition and fees
- International College, Thaksin University — official site
- Thaksin University Demonstration Secondary School — official site (confirms the Phatthalung campus)
- "Songkhla International School" — the only web presence we could find, last updated November 2012
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.
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