Prince Royal’s College (PRC) in Chiang Mai has signed education cooperation agreements with Education New Zealand and Avondale College in Auckland as it expands the international dimension of its Science & Technology Excellence Program (STEP).
PRC announced the agreements on 31 August 2026. The school says the Avondale partnership is intended to create a pathway under which STEP students can study against New Zealand NCEA Level 1 and Level 2 standards in Thailand before continuing to NCEA Level 3 at Avondale College in New Zealand.
The campus move changes the proposition
The academic partnership is only part of the story. PRC’s 2027 admissions material confirms that STEP will be delivered at the current Chiang Mai International School (CMIS) campus.
CMIS is itself preparing to move. Its 2025–26 school profile records a February 2025 groundbreaking and April 2025 construction-contract signing for a new campus, with opening anticipated for the 2027–28 school year.
This creates an unusual transition: an established international-school site is being reused to strengthen a programme within one of Chiang Mai’s largest Thai private schools rather than simply disappearing from the education market.
International characteristics without a conventional international-school model
PRC is not positioning STEP as a new standalone international school. It remains part of a Thai private-school structure. But the programme increasingly combines characteristics normally associated with international education.
PRC describes STEP as an English-medium programme focused on science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Its published curriculum states that subjects other than Thai and Chinese are taught in English by foreign teachers, while the New Zealand partnership adds an overseas secondary pathway.
The scale of the parent institution is also relevant. PRC’s current website reports more than 7,300 students across the school, giving it an established local base from which to develop a differentiated international-facing offer.
Why this matters for international-school operators
International-school competition is often measured through new licences, new campuses and additional seats. The PRC development highlights a different source of competitive pressure.
A large domestic private school can internationalise part of its offer through English-medium teaching, foreign faculty, overseas academic partnerships, progression routes and a differentiated campus environment. That can make it relevant to some of the same families targeted by conventional international schools even though the underlying school model is different.
This does not mean STEP should be counted as new international-school capacity. It does mean that a market assessment based only on licensed international schools risks understating the number of credible alternatives available to internationally minded families.
K12 Analysis
The competitive set is becoming wider than the international-school register.
The Chiang Mai development provides three signals for operators and investors assessing Thailand and comparable Southeast Asian markets.
- Internationalisation can occur inside domestic school structures. English-medium programmes and overseas pathways can move established private schools closer to the international segment without requiring a conventional international-school launch.
- Existing education assets can be repositioned. The planned use of the current CMIS campus demonstrates how established school infrastructure can support a different education proposition after the incumbent school relocates.
- Seat counts alone do not capture competitive intensity. A programme can compete for internationally oriented demand without appearing as a new international-school opening in conventional market-capacity data.
What to watch
The key questions now are how the NCEA pathway will operate in practice in Thailand, including the assessment and credit-awarding arrangements; how PRC positions STEP relative to Chiang Mai’s established international schools; the scale of enrolment it targets at the CMIS site; and whether similar domestic-school models emerge elsewhere in Thailand.
For K12, the development is best treated as a market-structure and competitive-positioning signal rather than a new international-school opening. It belongs alongside capacity data because it may influence the same parent demand, but it should not be added to international-school seat growth unless the regulatory and operating model changes.
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