Opened
2008

Conceived 2006 by John & Cynthia Hardy; 90 first students

Curriculum
Progressive

Own programme, WASC-accredited; Green School Diploma

Ages
3–18

Pre-K to Grade 12; diploma entry locked to Grade 11

Location
Abiansemal

Sibang Kaja, Badung — on the Ayung river

Structure
Licensed school

WASC-accredited; EiM partnership since 2021

Students
~514

40+ nationalities; many families moved to Bali for it

The short version

The short version

Green School Bali is a wall-less, bamboo-built Pre-K to Grade 12 school on the Ayung river in Abiansemal, Badung — conceived by entrepreneurs John and Cynthia Hardy in 2006, opened in September 2008 with 90 students, and grown to just over 500 students from more than 40 nationalities.

It teaches its own progressive, sustainability-driven programme under WASC accreditation, culminating in the two-year Green School Diploma, and it has been partnered with the Education in Motion (EiM) group since May 2021.↗↗↗

For a relocating family, the practical summary is this: Green School is the reason a meaningful share of its families live in Bali at all, and the on-campus co-working space for remote-working parents tells you who the school is built around.

But the financial terms are the strictest on the island — IDR 40 million in non-refundable application and registration charges (the registration fee is invoiced even to join the waitlist pool), a IDR 30 million deposit that can be forfeited two different ways, and a twelve-month minimum enrolment under which leaving early means no refund of deposit, tuition or fees.

Read the terms before you fall in love with the bamboo.↗↗

What the school is

A jewellery fortune, an Al Gore film, and a bamboo campus

The founding story is unusually well documented. John and Cynthia Hardy — Bali-based jewellery entrepreneurs — conceived the school in 2006 after watching An Inconvenient Truth, wanting a school they believed in for their own daughters.

The 22-metre bamboo bridge across the Ayung was completed in November 2006, and the school opened in September 2008 with 90 students on a campus built almost entirely from bamboo, local grass and mud brick.

The Hardys’ model has since been exported: Green School New Zealand opened in 2020, and in May 2021 the Green Schools group entered a partnership with Education in Motion, the group behind Dulwich College International and a family of schools teaching more than 11,000 students.↗↗↗

Structurally, the school is a licensed international school in Indonesia with WASC accreditation — the same US accreditor behind many American-curriculum schools — rather than an IB or Cambridge school.

Its Indonesian foundation (Yayasan Kul Kul) anchors the local side of the operation, and the Kul Kul Connection community programme, founded in 2016, teaches English and sustainability to more than 210 local students after school.↗↗

The school’s social architecture is distinctive too: The Bridge, an on-campus co-working and learning space launched in 2018, exists because so many Green School parents work remotely — and a mandatory annual levy ties every family to the Local Scholar Program, which funds places for Balinese children.

The school also holds a small number of reserved places for families who make a substantial contribution to that programme and pass the review process — an unusual admissions lane worth asking about directly if it applies to you.↗↗↗

Academics in practice

Capstones instead of exam boards

Green School does not run IB, IGCSE or A-level tracks. Learning is organised in four neighbourhoods — Early Years, Primary, Middle and High School — around project- and place-based work, with a signature capstone arc: Footprints in Grade 5, Quest in Grade 8 (ending in a TED-style talk), and Greenstone in High School.

The High School qualification is the school’s own Green School Diploma under its WASC accreditation, and the diploma is a strict two-year programme: students must start at the beginning of Grade 11 to complete it, which effectively locks out Grade 12 entry for diploma-seeking students.↗↗

That structure has two consequences families must weigh honestly. First, university-bound students apply with a school transcript and portfolio rather than an internationally examined qualification — the school publishes graduate destinations through its own channels, and you should ask for them with cohort context rather than take the marketing on faith.

Second, transferring out mid-secondary — back into an IB, British or American system — needs planning, because there is no external exam currency to carry with you. For families certain of a progressive path through to graduation this is the appeal; for those on a two-year posting it is a risk to price in.

On language and learning support, the terms are specific: English learners are assessed with WIDA, and students entering High School must test at WIDA composite level 4 or 5 to access the programme — younger children needing English development may be routed through Green School English, a separate programme with its own terms and calendar.

If a child needs a full-time one-on-one aide, the family — not the school — must locate and pay for it.↗↗

Admissions and cost

Admissions, and the fee terms that lock you in

Green School takes two intakes a year — August and January — with full-year enrolments prioritised, application deadlines of 15 August and 15 December, and later applicants going to a waiting list.

The age cut-off is September, with a minimum age of three for Early Years and a maximum entry age of 16 for High School. High School applicants submit reports and teacher recommendations plus an essay and a video, and interview with a committee that includes the Head of Upper School.↗↗

The non-refundable block comes first: a IDR 4,000,000 application fee with each enrolment cycle — non-refundable even if no place is offered — and a one-time IDR 36,000,000 registration fee invoiced on acceptance to reserve the place, or to be added to the waitlist pool.

That last clause deserves emphasis: you can pay IDR 36 million without holding a place, the fee is non-refundable if you withdraw, it stays valid only one year, and deferring beyond two semesters means paying it again.

Then comes the refundable deposit — IDR 30,000,000 per child — which the school holds for the whole enrolment.↗

The deposit is refundable in name and conditional in practice.

It is forfeited if you withdraw earlier than the twelve-month minimum enrolment period — a rule under which no deposit, tuition or fees already paid come back at all — and it is also forfeited on late withdrawal notice after the Intention to Continue deadline, a second trigger that catches even long-enrolled families who miss a re-enrolment date.

Early Years is the only exception to the minimum: a single-semester enrolment is possible when space allows, at a 10 per cent loading on the semester tuition.↗

For 2026-27, annual tuition runs from IDR 185,445,400 in the Gecko and Starling early years to IDR 328,600,900 in Grades 11-12, with sibling discounts of 5, 10 and 15 per cent from the second child.

Payment shaping carries real premiums: semester payment (two instalments weighted 70/30) adds 3 per cent for the year, and termly payment adds 8 per cent and is restricted to existing families past the twelve-month minimum.

New students’ first invoice is due within 14 days, late payment triggers a 10 per cent surcharge plus an IDR 500,000 administration fee, High School adds IDR 7,250,000 for service trips, and every family pays the annual Local Scholar Program levy (which includes two parents’ membership of The Bridge).↗↗

The family experience

Visas, village life and the Ayung commute

The campus sits in Sibang Kaja, Abiansemal — roughly between Ubud and the Canggu corridor — and the school’s own relocation guide is candid that many families choose housing within a short radius of it, since Bali journeys balloon without warning.

The guide also warns families not to commit financially to anything — housing included — until a place is formally offered, which pairs uncomfortably with the non-refundable registration fee; sequence your decisions carefully.↗↗

On immigration, the school’s own guide explains the mechanics: Green School issues the official Letter of Acceptance needed for a student visa (student KITAS) once a place is offered and tuition fees are paid; the process was quoted at 8-12 weeks, with the student KITAS then requiring collection outside Indonesia — families applying onshore flew to Singapore to pick up the visa.

A private agency, Ganesha Consulting, keeps an office on campus and handles many families’ applications. Visa agencies add the general rule: foreign children enrol on a school-sponsored student KITAS or a dependent KITAS tied to a parent’s permit, and tourist visas are not valid for enrolment.

Rules change often — confirm the current pathway with the school and a licensed agent before you book anything.↗↗

Parent sentiment in the public record skews devotional — families describe moving countries for the school — but the honest counterweights appear in the same relocation literature: the programme’s looseness does not suit every child, transfers back into exam systems can sting, and Bali’s practical frictions (traffic, flooding in the wet season, healthcare that may require evacuation cover) belong in the family decision as much as the campus does.

Treat the school’s polished media as what it is — and ask current parents the questions below.↗

Our readConfidence: Medium

A genuinely distinctive school — with the island’s most binding fee terms

Our confidence is Medium rather than High. The founding story, the EiM partnership, the WASC accreditation, the diploma’s two-year structure and the entire fee architecture are first-party — the 2026-27 fee schedule and the admissions policy are unusually explicit documents.

What we could not verify: the numeric tables inside the fee PDF (image-rendered; amounts cross-checked against the aggregator mirror), current visa mechanics (the school’s guide is dated 2020-21 and Indonesian rules move), published outcome data, and the classrooms themselves.

The confidence limit here is about outcomes, not terms: the terms are clear, and they are strict.

Green School suits families choosing a lifestyle as much as a school — remote-working or sabbatical families, children who thrive in unstructured, project-based environments, and parents aligned with the sustainability mission who can commit to at least a full year and ideally the whole arc.

It suits less well if your child needs conventional structure, if a transfer back into IB/A-level/AP systems is likely, if your dates are uncertain enough that a twelve-month lock is dangerous, or if IDR 40 million of sunk cost before day one concentrates the mind.

The families it works for tend to describe it as the reason for the move; the families it fails describe the same rigidity from the other side. Know which family you are before the registration invoice arrives.

Take these to the school

Questions that move beyond the tour script

Admissions and fit

  1. For our child’s age and a January or August start, what does current availability look like — and if we join the waitlist pool, exactly when is the IDR 36 million registration fee invoiced and when does it expire?
  2. What does the first month look like for a child arriving from a conventional curriculum, and how do you flag — early — a child who is not settling into the model?
  3. How do WIDA assessments work for our child’s age, and what happens if they fall below the High School threshold later?

Academics and outcomes

  1. May we see the last three years of graduate destinations with cohort sizes, and examples of successful transfers back into IB or British systems if we had to leave?
  2. How is the Green School Diploma presented to universities, and which universities have accepted it recently?
  3. What learning support is available in-school versus parent-funded, and what would a one-on-one aide arrangement cost in practice?

Cost, contract and visas

  1. Walk us through a full exit scenario: if we had to leave Bali at month nine, exactly what do we lose — deposit, tuition, fees?
  2. What is the Intention to Continue deadline this year, and what notice protects the IDR 30 million deposit?
  3. What is the current student KITAS process for our nationality — does the school sponsor directly or via the on-campus agency, what does it cost, and when must we be outside Indonesia?

Continue your research

Choose your next step

Sources and further research

Where to verify and keep reading

We favor direct links to the exact page or document a family may need next. Access dates matter because admissions, tuition, leadership, and programs change.