Visiting a bilingual or trilingual school

By the Editorial team. Reviewed October 2026.

Several international schools around Bangkok teach Mandarin or Thai as a core subject rather than an option. A school visit is the best chance to see whether the language programme matches the brochure.

Look at the timetable

Ask to see a week's timetable for your child's grade. Count the hours given to each language. A school that teaches Mandarin for one lesson a week is offering a foreign-language class. A school that teaches it every day, with separate streams by level, is running a bilingual programme. Both are fine, but they produce different results.

In a trilingual school the main curriculum may be taught in English while Mandarin and Thai are taught every day to every student. Ask whether that holds in all grades or only in the early years.

Who teaches the languages

Ask where the language teachers trained and whether they teach in their first language. Ask how many students in each class are native speakers of the language, since a class with a large native-speaker group moves at a different pace from a class of beginners.

Joining with no second language

If your child is starting from zero, ask how beginners are placed. Good schools set up separate beginner groups and can tell you how long most new students take to join the mainstream class. Ask to see the beginner group on your visit if it is in session.

Exams and certificates

Language skills are easier to show to universities when there is a certificate behind them. For Mandarin, ask whether students sit the HSK exams. For Thai, ask whether the school follows the Thai Ministry of Education's requirements for Thai nationals, which apply to Thai students at international schools.

Listen in the corridors

On a weekday visit, notice which languages children use with each other at break. It is an informal test, and an honest one.