International School Ho Chi Minh City

The oldest international school in Saigon and the first IB World School in Vietnam, founded in 1993 and part of Cognita since 2011.

ISHCMC is the only school in HCMC authorised to offer all three IB programmes from PYP through to the Diploma. Around 1,300 to 1,400 students from over 50 nationalities are split between a primary campus on Vo Truong Toan and a purpose-built secondary site at 1 Xuan Thuy in Thao Dien which opened in 2017. CIS and NEASC accreditation sit alongside the IB authorisations, and the school holds a 100 percent Diploma pass rate in recent years.

Day to day, the school is known for its mindfulness programme, strong sport, and a positive-education ethos that families either love or find too soft. Cognita ownership brings group operational support and the option of inter-school exchanges with sister schools in Vietnam. Some long-tenure families flag that the school feels larger and more corporate than in earlier years. Fees of roughly VND 279 to 959 million put it at the top of the Saigon market.

• ISHCMC is the oldest international school in Ho Chi Minh City, founded 1993 and the first IB World School in Vietnam. Now part of Cognita and running the full IB continuum from PYP through DP across primary and secondary campuses.
• The dominant online theme is sustained decline since the Cognita acquisition. One former teacher said "ISHCMC really has slipped since being acquired by cognita" and another wrote "ISHCMC is no longer a top school. It has gone extremely downhill the past few years."
• Reddit's r/Internationalteachers carries repeated 2023 to 2025 accounts of an uncompetitive teacher package, hiring of younger inexperienced staff to keep costs down, mass non-renewals, and what several voices called a "bullying culture from leadership."
• Cognita's group rating sits at 2.6, and ex-teachers describe the school as having absorbed students from sister school ISSP after its closure, with overcrowding as a consequence.
• Genuine strengths surface alongside the criticism. ISHCMC delivers the full IB continuum, posts a 2018 IBDP average of 33.5 against the global 29.78, and runs a daily 10-minute mindfulness class as a flagship wellbeing programme.
• Critics question value at fees that reach 750 to 820 million VND in upper secondary. One parent put it bluntly: "for what you pay it is pretty terrible. You can look at the universities their graduates go to and it isn't as impressive as you'd expect given you are paying almost $50,000 a year."
• The pattern is consistent: a long-established IB school still capable of strong outcomes for engaged students, now under cost-led management whose decisions parents and teachers describe as eroding the package.