Archives: FAQs

Choosing an international school in Thailand opens the door to a truly global education. Families looking for academic excellence and a future-ready foundation will find that international education offers several advantages.

At BASIS International School Bangkok, students gain access to a curriculum designed to develop critical thinkers, confident communicators, and curious learners. With instruction in English, advanced coursework beginning in the middle grades, and support for multilingual development, our students are well-prepared to succeed in universities worldwide.

From Nursery to Grade 12, students benefit from a globally respected academic framework. We focus on reasoning, questioning, and skill-building, supported by educators who understand how to balance academic rigor with student well-being.

Our most commonly asked question! Seat capacity changes from year to year depending on the reenrollment of our current students and expansion into additional grade levels. As this is an ever-changing number, we aren’t able to determine seat capacity until early of April, after the reenrollment deadline of our current families, which is why we make the majority of our admissions offers (Regular Admissions) in March-April. So, though we cannot provide you specifics of exactly how many seats are available “this year” and in “this grade”, we encourage you to apply as we will have available seats in all grades every year.

We offer two application cycles during our core season. Early Admissions will require families to complete their application earlier in order to have the opportunity to receive an admissions decision and accept their seat earlier. Regular Admissions will have all the same requirements but families receive an admissions decision and accept their seat at a later date.

We enroll new students every year. For students to achieve the results that they do in our program, they must have the necessary support along their academic journey, from both the school and at home. While we encourage families to join our program sooner rather than later, students consistently join in later grades and are incredibly successful, although later grades are highly selective and only reserved for students with a record of extremely high academic achievement.

One of the tools with which we support our students is through Student Hours. Teachers provide support through targeted interventions as well as office hours throughout the school week for both students and parents to talk through concerns or questions. In addition to this, our school has a student affairs’ department consisting of deans and counselors. This department provides academic and social emotional tools, along with interventions for academic and behaviors support plans.

Depending on the grade we offer a number of other programs, including Academic Enrichment, Silent Study Hall and Homework Club where students support one another.  There are student-led clubs like Debate, Art, and Editorial where students have an opportunity to develop their leadership and organization skill.  We also offer Summer Packets before the start of the school year to help build the foundational knowledge needed to be successful in the upcoming grade.

Every year, we have students join us from a variety of schools. Any motivated student can excel in our program. We have a strong support network to ensure a student has the toolkit to succeed. In the beginning, there is always some adjustment for students. Workloads may be higher than average in the beginning as students adjust to the structure and practices of our day-to-day program and classroom experience. However, we see time and again, that students adjust and learn how to utilize their resources to thrive in their school life.

School administration, faculty, and staff are always present to participate in supporting and guiding students, as well as helping develop good work and study habits, along with time management skills.

This depends on the student, their core classes, electives, after-school activities, and even what time of year it is, especially in high school. Grade 5 students will typically see approximately 70 mins of homework every night, but that depends on the day and the student. Grade 6-12 students will have at least 90 mins of homework, but that once again depends on the student and their schedule. Homework in high school largely depends on our students course selections. Our Student Affairs Team assists in monitoring homework but since each student, their work ethic, and their schedules can vary, it is hard to say an exact time for each grade.

Absolutely! Most of our student body participates in at least one extracurricular activity or teacher-led and student-led club at our school every year. But our answer to this is, “it always depends on the student.” We have high School students taking multiple AP courses and they participate in one to two clubs or more, but we also have middle or primary school students who take their required coursework and only have time to participate in one club.

Students are given the tools to learn and practice organization, time management, and work and study habits. But no two students are alike. It is more important to us that our students learn to take on only what they can handle, challenge themselves when appropriate, and learn when and if they need to turn their focus elsewhere. Many students may play a sport or participate in a club on campus but also engage in an activity outside of school such as instrumental music or martial arts. Our students learn to manage their time while exploring and enjoying their extracurricular interests and passions.

We believe academic degrees or experience in the disciplines taught, and passion for that subject are the most important tools for inspiring deep content understanding in students. Our selective hiring process screens for candidates who are committed to sharing their expertise and helping students become the best versions of themselves.

Our recruiting is managed by the BASIS Recruiting Team in the United States.  They receive thousands of applicants each year and make the initial determination as to which candidates should be screened.  This team is responsible for conducing the initial interviews before passing them to our team in Thailand.

Once we receive candidates from the Recruiting Team, our Head of School and Senior School Leadership team makes the determination as to if this candidate has the right profile for our school.  If selected, the candidate must then interview with a panel of individuals typically consisting of the Head of School, a School Director and, if applicable, a Subject Expert Teacher.

All final candidates are invited to conduct a Teacher Demo. If the candidate is located nearby one of our schools in the United States, China or Thailand then the Heads of School assemble classes of our students and administrators, and candidates are given the opportunity to teach a lesson, challenge students, show their subject expertise, as well as show their ability to communicate high-level subject matter to young students.   In other cases, we ask for a virtual Teacher Demonstration.

Our students take these sessions seriously; they know their feedback weighs heavily in our hiring decisions. Some new faculty members have been teaching for years in school or university settings. Others are leaving a research lab or corporate job to leap into a new career and share their experience and applied knowledge with BASIS students.

For Early Years, the Nursery has a maximum of 15 students, with PreK1 to Kindergarten capped at 20 students.  Our teaching model is unique with every early-years classroom consisting of an Early Education Teacher and an Early Education Teacher Fellow.  The Early Education Teacher is an expatriate teacher who typically has broad experience in teaching early-years or has a degree in early education.  Their role is to bring the BASIS curriculum to life in the classroom and are experts in the pedagogy of early-years education.  The Early Education Teaching Fellow has a similar background to the Early Education Teacher, but are native Thais.  Their role is to co-teach with the Early Education Teacher and help to accelerate the English language acquisition of our non-native English-speaking students.  Nursery, PreK1 and PreK2 also have Nannies to assist our two teachers in the classroom.

For the Primary, Grade 1 through Grade 5 the maximum capacity is 25 students per class.  With these grade levels, our students have a Learning Expert Teacher (LET) that stays with them throughout the day and an individual Subject Expert Teacher (SET) that joins their class for each subject.  In the case of Grade 5, we have an Academic Coach who is responsible for the whole grade level.

For Middle and High School, the maximum capacity is 25 students per class.  Grade 6 and above will also have up to 25 students but have an individual Subject Expert Teacher for each subject.

We believe that these skills begin at home and we rely on our parents and guardians to work in partnership with us to enhance social emotional learning. On the school side, students are a part of a learning community, one that gives the opportunity for young adults to better themselves, have achievements, have failures, learn lessons, etc. One of the unique things about our program is that we implement an SEL (social emotional learning) curriculum starting in kindergarten that is regularly taught as part of the school day.

At our school, there is School Character Traits – we are the TUSKERS, which is an acronym that stands for Thinkers, Unique, Supportive, Kind, Exceptional, Respectful, and Sincere.  These core values are embraced throughout all Members of our community, including Students, Teachers, Non-Teaching Staff, Parents, and various partners.  These values are interwoven throughout our culture and appear throughout our school in the form of reward systems, songs, and lesson planning.

Whether it be their behavior in the hallways, participating in class discussions, or connecting with friends during lunchtime or after school, they are learning these lessons through their relationships with their teachers and fellow students. Its’ a daily journey and one that reminds students of the community they are a part of, and the respect we require them to show other people and themselves.