Hsinchu International School

Hsinchu's only purpose-built international school, founded in 1981 by Philips for its expat families and now serving the wider Science Park community of around 200 students from pre-K to grade 12.

HIS sits on Niu Pu East Road and ties closely to Hsinchu Science Park, the engine that draws most foreign families to the city. Class sizes run 10 to 20 with a roughly 14:1 student-teacher ratio, and the school has been running long enough to have a track record of placing leavers at solid universities worldwide.

The pitch is straightforward. Families coming to Hsinchu for tech work want an English-medium school close to HSIP, and HIS is the established option. Reviews are warm, with parents pointing to the small community and the fact that teachers know every child by name. The trade-off compared with the larger Taipei schools is breadth of co-curricular offer and university counselling depth. Families weighing HIS often look at International Bilingual School at Hsinchu Science Park and the American School in Taichung as alternatives.

• HIS is one of the long-standing options for Hsinchu's expat and tech-cluster families, established 1981. Current and former students describe it positively, calling it a chill school and naming it alongside HCAS, IBSH and AAIA as the credible Hsinchu shortlist.
• Class sizes run 10 to 20 with a 14:1 ratio. Aggregator pages carry a small pool of strongly positive parent reviews calling it a great school full of happy kids.
• Glassdoor teacher reviews are split. Positive themes include generous holidays, respectful students, freedom over curriculum, low tax and a small close-knit community. Negative themes cluster around no retirement plan, stagnant compensation that reviewers describe as below peer schools, role-stacking, and high turnover.
• Some teacher reviewers describe ownership and senior leadership as profit-driven and removed from day-to-day operations, with poor compensation for additional leadership work.
• A 2024 Internationalteachers thread weighing HIS against Kang Chiao and Hsinchu International Academy shows the school remains on candidates' radar despite the staff-side caveats.
• Parent feedback runs ahead of staff sentiment. Families should weigh the operational concerns as teacher-experience caveats, not as direct red flags on classroom quality.