Shanghai Community International School

A full IB continuum school with campuses on both sides of the Huangpu, known for diversity, a relaxed culture, and the Hongqiao primary feeder feel.

SCIS opened in 1996 and runs a Pudong Hongfeng campus and a Hongqiao Puxi campus, serving roughly 1,800 students aged 2 to 18. It is a full IB continuum World School, offering PYP, MYP and DP. Daniel Eschtruth is the head, accreditation is WASC, and the community spans more than 50 nationalities and 35 languages, one of the most diverse profiles in Shanghai.

The pitch parents recognise is a genuine global mix, classroom warmth in early years, and a less hothouse culture than SAS. The PAFA parents association is active and the international rotation feel is strong. Critics say the academic ceiling at the top of high school sits below SAS or Concordia, and that families chasing IB Diploma scores in the high 30s to low 40s sometimes move at Year 11. Best fit is families who want IB across all years and prize community over scale.

• forum threads consistently describe SCIS as one of Shanghai's genuine international schools by intake, drawing students from a wide spread of countries rather than a single dominant community.
• Tone among teachers and recent posters is warm. One former teacher described 17 students from 14 countries in a single class. Another post named SCIS as the best school in Shanghai for how it treats teachers.
• Programme is full IB across PYP, MYP and Diploma. Early years are described as more relaxed and play-based than other tier-1 alternatives, which several posters cite as a reason to choose SCIS for younger children.
• Family-friendly framing extends to scholarship support; a 2023 comment said the school helps families with limited budgets, which is unusual signal for a tier-1 Shanghai international school.
• The Pudong campus is repeatedly described as small. Some students prefer the Puxi campus, with archived posts comparing Pudong unfavourably for academic intensity. The split-campus structure is a recurring fit consideration.
• A 2015 episode where about twenty staff were laid off shortly before the school year, with a campus consolidated and one lower school converted to a local model, sits in the public record. It does not surface in current parent threads but remains the only major operational controversy in the school's online history.