Cities / Saigon / Horizon International Bilingual School - Ho Chi Minh Campus
Horizon International Bilingual School - Ho Chi Minh Campus
A bilingual Cambridge school in Thao Dien that opened its first K-12 campus in 2005 and remains one of the more affordable English-medium options in District 2.
In brief
A bilingual Cambridge school in Thao Dien that opened its first K-12 campus in 2005 and remains one of the more affordable English-medium options in District 2.
HIBS runs two streams, a Vietnamese-English bilingual programme and a fully international English track, both built on the Cambridge pathway from primary through Cambridge Advanced (A Level). Around 500 students span ages 2 to 18, drawn from roughly 25 nationalities, and the school sits in a quiet pocket of Thao Dien close to the An Phu cluster.
Fees start at roughly VND 255 million for younger years with additional one-time costs in the first year, which puts Horizon well below the BIS, ISHCMC and EIS tier and explains why families on a tighter budget short-list it. Feedback splits. Long-tenure parents praise the warmth and the steady English progression, while others flag inconsistent attention across the cohort and a sense that some teachers favour higher-achieving children. Worth a campus visit and a frank chat with current parents on how the bilingual stream is delivered year by year.
Reviews
- The Saigon campus is the southern half of a Vietnam-Turkey-linked group running a bilingual track in Vietnamese and English alongside an international track to IGCSE and A Level.
- Aggregator pages cluster around 4 stars on a small pool. Parents praise communication tools, dedicated teachers and a diverse student body, and describe a smaller campus that suits families who don't want a glitzy full-international price tag.
- Several reviewers flag soft spots: a few say teachers favour students they perceive as smart or well-off, and some note time-management and transition issues between lessons.
- One ex-teacher on a teachers' subreddit grouped Horizon's HCMC campus with other Vietnam bilinguals, claiming staff treatment had slipped that academic year. The pool of staff voices is small and not corroborated elsewhere.
- The school's lineage sits inside the wider Hizmet/Gulen-affiliated network. The HCMC principal told VnExpress International that the operation is independent of the Gulen movement; the connection still surfaces in coverage and is worth context, not a verdict.
- Public reviews are mostly mid-pool, mid-volume. Families should treat directory scores as a starting point and ask currently enrolled parents about turnover and class-by-class teaching consistency.