Australian International School Manila

AIS started life as the family-run Esteban School and switched to the Western Australian curriculum in 2010-2011, the only school in the Philippines offering WACE. Around 200 students aged 3 to 18 on a small Paranaque campus along Sucat Road.

The Esteban family still runs the school, with Eleanor Esteban as a director and her children handling administration, WACE and business operations. Class sizes are very small, often single digits in upper years, and the curriculum follows Western Australia through to the WACE certificate. Fees run roughly PHP 100,000 to PHP 400,000, well below the big international names.

Families who choose AIS describe a welcoming, almost familial environment where teachers know every child and individual attention is real rather than a marketing line. Parent voice praises the personal feel and the clear Australian university pathway. Best fit for families wanting an Australian credential without the cost of the larger Manila international schools, and comfortable with a small cohort and a south Manila commute.

• The published parent voice is small but uniformly warm. Parents describe the school as family-like, with one writing that AIS "accepts and nurtures every individual the way a family does" and another saying their child has "thrived at AIS, academically and as a good friend".
• The most concrete differentiator surfaced by reviewers is size. Independent listings put the student body in the low hundreds with small class averages, framing AIS as an alternative to Manila's larger flagship campuses.
• Public criticism is essentially absent from open sources. That is a soft signal in a small school, not a sweep.