SISB cuts Thai pupil target as competition grows

Thailand’s international school expansion is spreading enrolment growth across more operators, making the cost of filling each new campus central to investment returns.

Kasikorn Research Center’s analysis of Thailand’s international school market this year and its forecasts for 2027, carried by the Nation, estimates 280 schools this year. School numbers have increased by approximately 5.3 per cent, against student growth of 3.8 per cent.

Demand is still expanding. Student numbers have risen from 66,352 in 2022 to 86,056 this year. Yet average enrolment has slipped from 312 pupils per school in both 2024 and 2025 to 307. A growing market can still leave individual operators with a slower route to covering campus costs.

Fee increases meet resistance

Bangkok concentrates that competition, accounting for more than 45 per cent of Thailand’s international schools. Average annual tuition in the capital is forecast to rise approximately 5 per cent to 839,184 Thai baht in the current academic year, following an increase of about 3 per cent previously.

Higher tuition offers an immediate way to raise income without filling additional classrooms. It also shifts more of the commercial burden onto existing families. A school that raises its published fees while losing pupils may gain less income than its price list suggests.

International school operator SISB illustrates the limits to that strategy. Kaohoon International, reporting Krungsri Securities’ account of an analyst meeting, said management had cut its student target for this year to 4,600 from 4,800. The company had approximately 4,400 pupils and had frozen tuition for the current academic year.

Management was considering a 3–5 per cent tuition increase for the 2027/28 academic year. That leaves recruitment and retention carrying the immediate revenue burden. For an established operator, holding fees can protect its competitive position; for a new campus, matching that restraint can lengthen the period in which its sponsor funds operating losses.

Foreign families need to become enrolled pupils

New entrants are targeting specific catchments. Automotive group Siam Motors Group inaugurated Highgate International School Thailand in Chonburi on 7 October. According to the Nation, the school targets executives working in the Eastern Economic Corridor, business owners, digital nomads and affluent local households.

The school was targeting an inaugural cohort of 100 pupils, split evenly between Thai and international families, with a long-term capacity cap of 600–800. Those are recruitment and capacity plans. The financing challenge is to pace staffing and facilities expenditure against the families who actually take places.

Highgate’s annual tuition starts at 590,000 baht. Its classes are capped at 12 pupils in Early Years, 20 in Junior School and 22–25 in Senior School. Those limits make the staffing model part of the pricing proposition: families are paying for close attention, while the operator must sustain that service as admissions build. Small classes leave less room to spread teaching costs within each class, making recruitment across the school’s year groups central to its economics.

The head of Highgate in London sits on the Thai governing board and conducts quarterly operational reviews. Faculty recruitment was conducted jointly over 12 months, drawing teachers from the United Kingdom, Singapore, Hong Kong and leading Bangkok schools. For the partners, recruitment and oversight are commitments behind the school’s premium positioning. Protecting that proposition requires keeping educational delivery consistent while controlling the expenditure needed to provide it as the pupil base grows.

A foreign-family proposition also needs a precise catchment. An executive population can support a campus only when its families choose the location, curriculum and fee level on offer. Recruitment tied to a particular employment base exposes the school to changes in those families’ residence and schooling decisions.

SISB is pursuing a different price position with Marina Singapore International School, planned to open in August 2027. It targets 120–200 pupils at tuition 40 per cent below SISB’s average. Around 30 families had expressed interest. The lower fee widens the potential customer pool, but also leaves less tuition income per pupil to absorb campus costs.

Campus costs determine the return

The pressure on SISB extends beyond its recruitment target. Krungsri expected its net profit to decline 8 per cent this year, citing sluggish enrolment recovery and persistently high fixed costs. The forecast puts the operating challenge plainly: a campus carries costs while management works to fill its classrooms.

For investors, school counts are a blunt guide to competitive supply. A campus opening with limited year groups creates a different immediate recruitment burden from a fully staffed school. Empty places become expensive when facilities, teaching commitments and other fixed expenditure run ahead of fee income.

The sector has a profitable recent history. The Department of Business Development’s analysis of a sample of 20 international schools over 2020–2024 recorded revenue of 8.31 billion baht and profits of 1.83 billion baht in 2024, according to the Nation.

In 2023, the same analysis recorded revenue of 7.32 billion baht and profits of 1.60 billion baht. The attraction for investors is a school business that can turn fee income into earnings once its operating model is supported by paying families. For a campus sponsor, the commercial task is to build that income base while preserving the teaching and service standards used to recruit pupils in the first place.

That history offers encouragement for established schools with a settled pupil base. New entrants face a different cash requirement because their enrolment must build while the campus operates. For contractors and equipment suppliers, opening creates orders; for school owners, it begins the longer task of earning back the investment.

The largest commercial risk is a mismatch between committed costs and paying pupils. Strong retention and admissions achieved without heavy discounts would improve the investment case. Fee resistance, withdrawals and slow recruitment would pull it in the opposite direction, even while aggregate sector revenue continued to grow.

Management’s downside scenario gives that risk a concrete scale. SISB anticipated that enrolment might remain around 4,400 in the second half, which could bring a 3–5 per cent year-on-year decline in revenue for that period.