Taipei European School

The short version

The short version

Taipei European School (TES) is a not-for-profit international day school for ages 3-18, formed in the early 1990s when the city’s small British, French and German schools joined on a shared campus.

It operates as one school — one foundation, one fee framework, unified policies — while teaching three national curricula in three languages of instruction across four sections: British Primary, French (including a bilingual programme), German, and British Secondary and High School.

The British track runs through IGCSE to the IB Diploma, and French and German students can graduate with their home Baccalaureates.↗↗↗

For a relocating family, the practical summary is this: TES is the natural first call for European families in Taipei — and especially for French- or German-speaking children, for whom it is effectively the only full national-curriculum option in the city.

English-speaking families choose between its British/IB pathway and Taipei American School’s American AP/IB pathway; that comparison, more than any other, shapes a Taipei shortlist.

What the school is

One foundation, three national systems

TES is registered as a non-profit foundation supervised by the Taipei City Government’s Department of Education. Governance sits with a nine-member volunteer Board of Directors that sets strategy and hires the CEO, who acts as Executive Principal; the head of each section reports to the CEO.

The school was recruiting a new CEO to start August 2026, so leadership is in transition — ask who holds the role when you visit.↗↗↗

The one-school framing is not marketing: policies, fees and the admissions framework are unified across sections, the school publishes a single 2026-27 fee schedule in English, French and German, and every family signs the same Enrolment Agreement annually as a condition of continued enrolment.

What stays distinct is the classroom — each section teaches its own national curriculum in its own language, with teaching staff recruited predominantly from the UK, France and Germany.↗↗

Scale is moderate by regional standards: roughly 1,750-1,800 students from more than 50 nationalities and over 30 first languages, with the British section the largest of the three.

Class sizes are capped at 24 in the British sections, with smaller classes in the High School and across the French and German sections — meaningfully smaller than the big American school up the road.↗↗

Curriculum and accreditation

Four exit qualifications, five accreditation links

The British section follows the English National Curriculum toward IGCSE (Cambridge) and then the IB Diploma; the IB Middle Years Programme began phasing in from Year 7 in August 2022, gradually replacing both the old Key Stage 3 curriculum and IGCSE.

Students who do not meet IB Diploma requirements can graduate with a TES diploma, and the IB Careers-related Programme is also on offer.

The French section follows the French national curriculum to the French Baccalaureate, and the German section the German system to the German Baccalaureate — a range of exit qualifications no other Taipei school matches.↗↗

Accreditation is layered to match: TES states it is fully accredited by both the Council of International Schools (CIS) and the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC), describes itself as multi-accredited with national-curriculum accreditation from France and Germany, and holds affiliations with the AEFE (the French overseas-schools agency) and the ZfA (Germany’s Central Agency for Schools Abroad).

It is also an IB World School, a FOBISIA member, and gained Eco School accreditation in November 2021.↗↗↗

On results, the most-cited public figures — an IB Diploma average of 37 points with a 100% pass rate, and a 100% French Baccalaureate pass rate — come from a schools aggregator and are undated, so treat them as indicative rather than current.

Ask the school for the latest cohort data with cohort sizes; a 37 average, if it holds for the current cohort, is comfortably above the global IB average.↗

Campuses

Two campuses: Shilin primary, Yangmingshan secondary

TES runs two campuses in Shilin District, and the split is structural: children aged 3-11 attend the Swire European Primary Campus at 99 Fuguo Road (completed 2007, with infant and junior buildings around a shared resource centre), while everyone from age 11 moves to the Swire European Secondary Campus at 31 Jianye Road on Yangmingshan.

Every TES family manages that transition — and the commute change that comes with it.↗↗

The Yangmingshan campus grew in phases — 1998, 2002 (when the High School opened) and a Phase 3 building completed in late 2019 — and was then substantially redeveloped by architects Aedas for the Taipei European School Foundation, a 19,361-square-metre project completed in 2021 that shaded the hillside buildings with bamboo-inspired screens.

The setting, on the slopes of the Yangmingshan national park area, is greener and quieter than the city-centre schools — and further from most of the neighbourhoods where expat families live, so test the bus run at school times.↗↗

Admissions and cost

Admissions, waiting pools and 2026-27 fees

Families apply to a specific section — British, French or German — and the school runs waiting pools when year groups fill.

For Semester 1 of 2026-27, most British-section year groups had already concluded admissions, with rolling applications only where seats remain; the FAQ confirms there is no boarding and addresses the limits of visa sponsorship.

A Taipei admissions consultancy reports a NT$6,000 application fee via the OpenApply platform, with assessments and interviews as required, and priority for families relocating for work, passport holders whose native language matches the section, siblings, and students continuing the same national curriculum — treat that as reported detail and confirm against the school’s own Admissions Policy.↗↗↗

Eligibility is the question to nail down first. Taiwan’s foreign-school framework restricts licensed international schools to foreign-passport holders — Taipei American School publishes that rule explicitly — but TES’s own eligibility text was not captured in our research pass, so confirm your child’s passport position with the admissions office before planning around a place.↗↗

Reported 2026-27 fees run NT$553,800 in the first kindergarten year, rising through NT$674,200 (K3-Grade 5), NT$786,600 (Grades 6-8) and NT$820,800 (Grades 9-10) to NT$836,000 in the IB Diploma years, plus a NT$50,000 one-time registration fee; sibling discounts run NT$10,000 per semester for the second child and NT$15,000 for the third and subsequent children.

These figures come from a schools aggregator working from the school’s published schedule — the school itself publishes the 2026-27 schedule in English, French and German on its policies page, so verify the exact line for your child’s year group there before budgeting.↗↗

The family experience

What parents actually report

Parent reporting is thinner for TES than for TAS, and we attribute what exists rather than generalise it.

US Foreign Service community post reports describe TES as “a really great environment” with “a holistic approach to the child learner” (2018), and one 2018 comparison judged that “academically, TES is a bit better [than TAS]… TES has more international students, TAS has a nicer campus and a more convenient location.”

A 2023 report notes a practical detail worth knowing: no school bus until Grade 3. These are individual dated reports, not a survey — but the “more internationally mixed” observation aligns with the school’s own nationality figures.↗

Day to day, the section system shapes the social experience: your child’s immediate world is their section and language stream, with whole-school life layered on top — a four-house system (Bora, Marin, Mistral, Sirocco), FOBISIA U13/U15 sport, and local fixtures against Morrison Academy and Taipei American School.

For families joining mid-childhood, the honest question is language: ask how the school places and supports a child whose French or German is not yet at section level, and what the bilingual programme in the French section involves.↗↗

Take these to the school

Questions that move beyond the tour script