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in 2019, vivian took her son jackson to a private school in australia for two months during the summer. this gave her the idea of ​​sending her child to an international school abroad. a friend suggested that she consider thailand as an alternative. vivian asked in confusion: "thailand is so poor, why go there to study?"

it was not until she visited the school in person that she realized that the things that attracted her to australian private schools were basically met by international schools in thailand: a variety of extracurricular activities, high-quality foreign teachers, and a variety of paths to higher education. in the summer of 2022, she brought her 12-year-old son to bangkok to attend junior high school.

lao fang moved to chiang mai in 2018 also for his children's education. at that time, he hoped to create a better language environment for his daughter who was in the third grade of elementary school.

compared with the united states, australia, britain and canada, thailand, where annual tuition fees are less than $100,000, is a very cost-effective country. in the past five years, it has become the choice of more and more chinese families, but some people have decided to leave.

elite education also emphasizes cost-effectiveness

cost-effectiveness is the most important reason why most families choose international schools in thailand. in china, the annual tuition fees of international schools are basically between 200,000 and 300,000 yuan. add in various cram schools, and the annual cost of basic education alone is more than 400,000 yuan.

thailand has more than 180 international schools, including branches of harrow school, shewsberry, basis, etc., but the prices are much more affordable. the tuition fees of the first-tier schools in bangkok are between 150,000 and 200,000, and those in chiang mai are between 70,000 and 120,000. if you are not looking for the reputation or the admission rate of the school, there are many international schools in thailand that only charge 30,000 to 50,000 yuan a year.

vivian did some calculations and found that if she sent her children to australia or canada, the annual cost for one adult and one child would be at least 700,000, and that was still a relatively economical situation. but based on her and jackson's experience living in thailand over the past two years, the annual cost of attending a first-tier international school in bangkok, plus all the expenses for travel and visiting relatives in china, would be around 500,000 at most.

lao fang and his daughter cathy live in chiang mai, where tuition fees and prices are lower. the expenses in the first year after they moved here were over nt$200,000, but now it’s just over nt$300,000.

another reason for choosing thailand is distance. compared with many families who go to europe and the united states to study with their children, many people still hope that both parents can be around as much as possible during the growth of their children.

a sixth-grade boy at chiang mai international school in thailand studies with his grandfather

vivian visited international schools in chengdu, bangkok, chiang mai and phuket. in her observation, international schools in thailand are much better than those in chengdu in terms of foreign teachers and student quality. "some domestic students transfer to international schools because they cannot continue studying in the public education system or do not want to study. the quality of students is uneven. on the other hand, although they are international schools, the textbooks they import are all approved by the ministry of education and are not original."

although international schools in shanghai use english to learn in class, children still communicate in mandarin after class, which lao fang believes is not conducive to children's language learning.

“thai aunties can’t cook sichuan cuisine”

vivian and her husband struggled for half a year before moving to bangkok. going to thailand not only meant adapting their children who grew up in public schools to a completely new education system, but also meant uprooting themselves as a 40-year-old.

vivian's anxiety is not without reason. when she first came to thailand, every little thing in life was a challenge for her. in chengdu, she was used to having hired aunties do all the housework. after coming to thailand, she had to learn everything from scratch, from cooking to washing clothes.

"you can also hire a gas aunt in thailand, but the aunties here don't know how to cook sichuan cuisine." when i first started learning to cook, the natural gas at home suddenly stopped one day. "in chengdu, this problem could be solved by making a phone call. in thailand, i need to contact the landlord first, and then call the gas tank replacement technician. he doesn't understand english, and i don't understand thai. at that moment, i felt that i couldn't handle such a small matter, and i was very frustrated."

when jackson was studying in china, vivian felt that her son had grown up with a sense of shame. once, when jackson was practicing calligraphy, a passing classmate saw him and mercilessly mocked him: "you work so hard, but your writing is so bad." he got 99.5 points in the math test, and he was very disappointed and said that he was a poor student. at that moment, vivian saw the pain that domestic education brought to children.

vivian chose a british international school in bangkok for jackson. school ends at 2 pm every day, and the school provides dozens of sports and extracurricular classes for children. her son fell in love with tennis here and took the initiative to ask his mother if he wanted to take tennis lessons. from getting up early to playing tennis and now joining the tennis team, training every afternoon under the scorching sun, vivian found that he did all this driven by his desire to learn independently, without any pressure from parents or teachers.

teachers in bangkok pay more attention to encouraging education. when jackson first arrived in thailand, his english was not good and he could only get c or d in many courses. in this atmosphere, jackson's enthusiasm for learning was much higher than when he was in china. at the end of the first academic year, he had already achieved a in eight of the thirteen courses and a+ in two.

"even if his grades are average, if he is good at a certain sport, has a cheerful personality, and is filial to his parents, the child will be proud of himself. but in china, grades are the only support point, and nothing else matters."

interestingly, during the holiday this year, vivian signed up her son for a one-on-one tennis private lesson at his request. but on the first day of the lesson, jackson gave up because of a comment from the coach: "he said the kid has been playing for a year, but he still plays so badly."

vivian could understand that the coach wanted to get parents to sign up for more classes by belittling the children, but at that moment she was extremely glad that she sent her child to study in bangkok.

educational migrants come and go

besides the educational environment, what impressed lao fang the most about chiang mai is that it is very livable. the winter in shanghai is particularly cold and wet. at the end of the year, my daughter would get sick for more than a week, which not only delayed her studies, but also made the family very chaotic.

in chiang mai, they lived in a single-family villa in the suburbs. when their daughter had nothing to do, she would play in the yard and take care of flowers and plants with her. she ran and jumped every day and her health improved a lot. in addition, chiang mai's winter is warm and pleasant. after coming to chiang mai to study, lao fang found that his daughter's frequency of illness has decreased a lot.

since 2022, more and more chinese families have moved to chiang mai to study and live. in order to ensure the diversity of school students, most international schools in thailand have restrictions on the number of students of the same nationality, and generally no more than 20% of students of the same nationality. but lao fang found that this rule was completely broken. the proportion of chinese students in the american-style school where his daughter is studying has reached 40%. what's more exaggerated is that more than half of the students in the school are chinese.

one day when picking up his child from school, lao fang saw cathy walking out of the school gate with her classmates. they were talking and laughing in mandarin, which made him feel very uncomfortable.

"i originally came here for a purer language environment, but now the proportion of chinese students in international schools in chiang mai is almost the same as in shanghai. it feels boring."

as more chinese families flocked to chiang mai, lao fang also felt that the environment around him had become more competitive. in the past, when people gathered together, they would discuss where to take their children camping on the weekend and what sports were popular recently. now, grades in various subjects have become the most important topic for parents to chat about. there are more and more after-school tutoring classes in chiang mai. there are parents around me who spend hundreds of thousands of yuan a year to send their children to various tutoring classes, which is not much different from china.

from the time he thought about leaving to the time he actually left, lao fang struggled for more than a year. "the main reason was that life in chiang mai was too comfortable, and i was a little reluctant to leave suddenly." however, considering the future development of his children, lao fang moved to canada this summer.

vivian also considered sending her children to canada. in her opinion, although the international schools in bangkok provide a good environment for children, "thailand is a developing country after all, and the life perspective of children here is not well nurtured."

"if he can go to the united states or canada, not only will the school help him, but the community will also support him, and his starting point will be higher. studying abroad is a money-burning journey. in the future, you will need to prepare at least 6 million to study in the united states. i think it's better to save money before high school."