The Canadian International School
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam · PrivateKey facts
Accreditations and programmes verified against official registries
IB · DP · authorised programmeCIS · accreditationACS WASC · accreditationCollege Board · authorised programmeCognia · accreditationCanadian International School System · school is part of the networkEQuest Education Group · school is part of the networkWhat stands behind each entry
A Swiss non-profit, working since 1968. Its programmes are among the most widely recognised school programmes in the world. Authorisation is granted stage by stage, so a school with the final stage does not necessarily run the younger ones; which stages this school holds is set out in the line below.
What the badge means for this school. The school is allowed to run this programme and to award its certificate. This is a confirmation of the programme, not a judgement on the school as a whole. The entry stands in the organisation's public register - anyone can check it. At this school: DP (ages 16-19). DP is the final stage, ages 16 to 19: six subjects plus a compulsory core of theory of knowledge, an extended essay and CAS. The diploma is accepted by universities all over the world, and in a number of countries it counts for admission on the same footing as the local leaving certificate.
Register to check for yourself, and the full guide →It accredits international schools and is a paying association at the same time. It examines governance and ownership, the curriculum, teaching, student wellbeing, staff and premises; a team of volunteers from other CIS accredited schools visits the school. Membership and accreditation are different things here, and schools confuse them more often than anything else.
What the badge means for this school. The school has been through this organisation's accreditation. It was judged as a whole: governance, safeguarding, staff, premises, teaching. The entry stands in the organisation's public register - anyone can check it.
Register to check for yourself, and the full guide →An American regional accreditation of the institution, working since 1962 and covering some 5,500 schools in California, the Pacific and Asia. It judges the whole school: a self-study, then a team visit. It gives the same status to supplementary and virtual programmes, so the category of an entry is worth checking separately.
What the badge means for this school. The school has been through this organisation's accreditation. It was judged as a whole: governance, safeguarding, staff, premises, teaching. The entry stands in the organisation's public register - anyone can check it.
Register to check for yourself, and the full guide →An American organisation that allows a school to put the letters AP on a pupil's transcript. The permission is granted course by course and tied to a particular teacher, it has to be renewed every year, and College Board reads the course syllabus before granting it.
What the badge means for this school. The school is allowed to run advanced AP courses - not the school as a whole, but one by one: by subject and by teacher. Governance, safeguarding and the primary years are not part of that check. Which subjects are actually approved is visible in the ledger. The entry stands in the organisation's public register - anyone can check it.
Register to check for yourself, and the full guide →The widest-reaching American accreditation: some forty thousand schools in over a hundred countries. It accredits both individual schools and whole school systems. It also sells a paid membership with no inspection behind it, and that membership is often passed off as accreditation.
What the badge means for this school. The school has been through this organisation's accreditation. It was judged as a whole: governance, safeguarding, staff, premises, teaching. The entry stands in the organisation's public register - anyone can check it.
Register to check for yourself, and the full guide →Programmes of the University of Cambridge: the school teaches to Cambridge syllabuses and enters its pupils for exams that Cambridge marks itself. IGCSE means exams at around Year 10 or 11, the British counterpart of a lower secondary leaving certificate.
What this means for this school. The papers are marked by Cambridge, not by the school, so a leaver's grade does not depend on how strict their own teachers are with them. To enter pupils for these exams a school has to be registered as a Cambridge exam centre; registration as a centre is permission to run exams rather than accreditation of the school, and it says nothing about the quality of teaching. IGCSE is taken at around Year 10 or 11 and A-Level in the final years, and it is the A-Level results that carry a pupil into British and many other universities.
Advanced Placement: American advanced courses for the senior years. The exam for a course is set and marked by the College Board, not by the school. A good result is counted by American universities as a first-year course already passed, which saves a student time and money.
What this means for this school. A school does not get to call a course AP automatically: the College Board reads the course syllabus and approves it separately for every subject and every teacher, and the permission has to be renewed each year. Every approved school in the world is listed in the open AP Course Ledger, and this school's entry there stands as a line in the accreditation block above. How many courses a school is approved for, and in which subjects, the ledger does not show in its general listing. AP has no leaving certificate of its own: it sits on top of the school's main programme rather than being a separate system.
International Primary Curriculum: a British primary school programme for children aged 5 to 11. It teaches through themes that draw subjects together rather than through separate subjects; it is published by the International Curriculum Association, formerly Fieldwork Education.
What this means for this school. This is a programme for the primary stage, not an accreditation of the school: the organisation sells it to schools and trains their teachers, but it does not check the quality of teaching at a particular school and keeps no public register of the schools working to it. There is no outside register to check it against, so the entry comes from the school's own words or from the record of its accrediting organisation. The programme has no leaving certificate: at the end of primary school a child moves on to the middle stage, and it is that stage which decides what they finish with.
International Middle Years Curriculum: the continuation of IPC for the middle school, ages 11 to 14. The same organisation and the same thematic frame, only for teenagers.
What this means for this school. As with IPC, this is a programme for one stage rather than an accreditation of the school, and the organisation keeps no public register of the schools working to it. The entry comes from the school's own words or from the record of its accrediting organisation. The programme has no leaving certificate of its own: after it the school takes a pupil on to a final stage - IGCSE, A-Level, IB or a national programme - and that is what to look at.
Canadian International School System, CISS for short - a school system in Ho Chi Minh City. The system has no site of its own and tells about itself in sections on the sites of its schools; a common administration is confirmed by posts of the kind Head of School of CISS alongside a principal of its own at each school. The composition disagrees on these pages, and we give both: material on the start of the 2023/2024 school year speaks of almost 2,000 pupils at two schools, Canadian International School and Bilingual Canadian International School, while an announcement of the partnership with EQuest describes the same system as four schools and more than 3,000 pupils from kindergarten to grade 12, adding Albert Einstein School and the Canada-Vietnam Kindergarten. The chronology: CIS was established on 13 March 2009 as the first school in Vietnam with a Canadian programme, and BCIS opened on 4 November 2012 in Phu My Hung. Khoi Nguyen Education Holdings is named as the founder of both; on 2 December 2022 EQuest became the key shareholder. The sites do not draw a line between ownership and management and say nothing of a franchise.
What this means for this school. The network owns or operates the school. Its accreditation and programme authorisation the school obtains separately, in its own name.
EQuest Education Group is a Vietnamese education group which calls the organisations within it member institutions. The site gives no formal separation into ownership, management and franchise, but the milestones section describes purchases outright: Alpha School, Newton Grammar School, Victory Experimental School, Victory Sai Gon High School, St. Nicholas School Da Nang, Hanoi Star Education System, Happy School, American Polytechnic College, Saigon Polytechnic College, Phu Xuan University and Viet My Hanoi College have been acquired. The year of foundation is 2003, at first as the consulting company EQuest Academy; in November 2019 the holding company was renamed to its present name. There are three blocks: school education, colleges and universities, and educational technology. The numbers on the site differ and we give them all: the section about the group speaks of 25 institutions as of 2025, the home page shows 16 member brands, the school section speaks of 14 institutions with Cognia accreditation, and the description of the Vietnamese home page keeps the figure of 35 sites as of July 2020. Pupils and students: some 20,000 in the schools, 10,000 in the colleges and universities and more than 180,000 on digital programmes. The geography: Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Da Nang, Hai Phong, Hai Duong, Hue, Ba Ria-Vung Tau. The investors named are KKR, Vietnam Oman Investment and TAEL Partners: TAEL came in in October 2016, KKR in June 2021 and again in May 2023.
What this means for this school. The network owns or operates the school. Its accreditation and programme authorisation the school obtains separately, in its own name.