Phuket Travel Information

Phuket Schools and Education

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Schooling in Phuket

As Phuket has grown more cosmopolitan, education has kept pace. The following are among those institutions now offered on the island:

• Dulwich International College, an English-curriculum branch of Dulwich College, the noted British public school. Secondary school pupils may also board. (Kindergarten to Grade Twelve)
• Greenhouse International Pre-school An international pre-school for Children ages 1½ to 6 years. Learning through play with parent participation encouraged.
• QSI International School of Phuket (Nursery to Grade 12). The school follows an academic curriculum equivalent to other European and Asian international schools.
• a campus of the Prince of Songkhla University, with, among other programmes, a four-year English-curriculum degree course in hotel management
• the Rajapath Teachers' College, which, given the recent glut of qualified teachers locally, is now focusing on the training of "coastal guides" specializing in natural history and tour guides
• two vocational schools for Thais
• a growing number of English-as-a-second-language schools.

Education in Thailand

Education in Thailand is free and compulsory for all children between the ages of 7 and 14, and about 90 percent of the children are enrolled in either public primary schools or those operated by Buddhist monasteries. Only 33 percent of all eligible children attend secondary schools. Children are officially required to receive six years of education, and the government has announced its intention to increase that number to nine years. The literacy rate is 93 percent, higher than that of most other countries of Southeast Asia.

Elementary and Secondary Schools

In the early 1990s nearly 7 million students received primary education, including those at more than 31,400 public schools. More than 2.2 million students attended either lower- or upper-level secondary schools. In all of Thailand more than 577,000 teachers taught 11.9 million students.

Universities and Colleges

In the early 1990s there were more than 600,000 students enrolled in institutions of higher education in Thailand, including more than 300,000 students enrolled at two open universities. Thailand has 17 universities, the largest of which include Chulalongkorn University (1917) in Bangkok and Chiang Mai University (1964) in the north. In addition, the Asian Institute of Technology (1959), in Bangkok, offers graduate degrees. In the early 1990s about 38,500 students attended 36 teacher-training colleges, which also offer four-year degree programs.