Daisy Pellant takes helm at International School Bangkok

Thailand’s international schools are competing for pupils in a market where school numbers are growing faster than enrolment.

Kasikorn Research Center estimates school numbers have increased by approximately 5.3 per cent this year, against student growth of 3.8 per cent. For operators, that makes retaining families and explaining the value of their education central to investment decisions.

At International School Bangkok (ISB), new head of school Dr Daisy Pellant is beginning with community observation and an emphasis on students understanding themselves as learners. Her approach gives the school a way to sharpen its educational proposition around how pupils use the choices available to them.

Learner choice carries an operating cost

Pellant’s interest connects with an existing feature of the school. A high-school student describes being able to combine IB and AP classes into an individual pathway. The leadership opportunity is to make that flexibility work consistently for pupils and communicate its value to families.

Curriculum breadth creates an allocation challenge. A wide choice of classes needs enough specialist teaching and timetable flexibility to remain practical. Protecting every option can spread resources thinly; concentrating provision can weaken the personalised offer. Course demand and teaching capacity belong in the same budget discussion.

The recruitment implication follows from that model. Teachers need subject expertise and the ability to help pupils make coherent choices across courses. Investment in guidance and collaboration can therefore be as consequential as adding another subject. An expanded catalogue has limited commercial value if families struggle to navigate it.

Pellant places understanding the community ahead of strategic decisions. “If I didn’t understand what the lived experience was like, I wouldn’t be able to make decisions that were thoughtful,” she says. That approach favours identifying where the existing offer works and where delivery needs attention before allocating more resources.

The competitive backdrop rewards that discipline. Kasikorn Research Center identifies educational quality and specialist programmes as ways schools can distinguish themselves. ISB’s strongest commercial use of learner choice is to connect it to a clear account of the education families receive.

For admissions, the proposition needs to be specific enough to explain how individual pathways operate. For academic leaders, it needs to be affordable to deliver. The next consequential decisions will concern which courses attract sustained demand, how teachers support individual choices and where additional spending improves the pupil experience.