Choosing an international school in Malaysia — why we picked Epsom, and how the fees doubled

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In 2019, when our elder daughter was in Year 3, we chose Epsom College in Malaysia. What decided it was Mandarin alongside English, and the fact that it had boarding. The fees, which started at roughly ¥1.5 million a year, more than doubled over six years. Here is how we chose, and what boarding was actually like.

What you'll find here

The one criterion we chose the school on
The three reasons the fees more than doubled in six years
What boarding gave us — and where it fell short
City-centre schools versus a campus out of town

1. Why Malaysia in the first place

Plenty of countries teach in English. What made Malaysia different, for us, was Mandarin.

An environment where a child picks up Mandarin alongside English is not something Britain, the US or Australia can offer. That was the whole point.

So when we looked at schools, our first question was always how much Mandarin was actually in the timetable — not the prospectus, not the university destinations.

📌 Pick one criterion: every international school looks good on a tour. Decide the one thing you will not compromise on before you go, and comparison becomes much easier.

*A plant label in English, Malay and Chinese. The country's language environment, in a single photograph.*

2. What settled it was our daughter saying "this one"

We visited the campus. The playing fields, and the theatre. At the end of it, our daughter said, "this one".

That settled it. Six years on, I still think a school the child chose beats a school the parents chose.

Epsom College in Malaysia opened in 2014 as the only sister school of Epsom College in Surrey. It sits on roughly 80 acres at Bandar Enstek, Negeri Sembilan, with about 700 students aged 3 to 18 from more than 30 nationalities. The curriculum is the English National Curriculum, with Mandarin and Singapore Maths added at primary level.

*Inside the Epsom grounds. After lessons, pupils head off to boarding houses and activities.*

3. But it is out in the country

This part needs going into with your eyes open. The campus is about 45 minutes by car from central Kuala Lumpur (and about 15 from the airport). That space exists precisely because it is not in the city.

There are good international schools in central KL. But as far as we saw:

The sites are small — inevitable in a city
They have no boarding, and that matters later

While children are small, day school is plenty. But whether boarding stays on the table for the secondary years is not something you can change afterwards. It is decided the day you choose the school.

4. Fees: ¥1.5 million a year at the start, and more than double by the end

Epsom sits at the top of the fee range for international schools in Malaysia.

Even so, it began at around ¥1.5 million a year — not outrageous set against private schooling in Japan.

The problem was what happened next. Three things compounded.

Factor	What it does
1. Year groups	Fees rise as the child moves up. They are not flat
2. The exchange rate	A stronger ringgit lands directly on anyone paying in yen
3. Inflation	Local inflation, and the fee schedule is revised with it

On top of that, during the period she was a weekday boarder, the boarding fee came separately — on top of tuition.

📌 The bit budgets miss: work from the entry-year fee and you will run short. Build in the year-on-year rises and the exchange rate from the start.

Current fees are published by programme on the school's fees page. They are revised, so check the latest. A 6% SST is reported to apply to secondary fees from January 2026 (please verify).

5. Boarding was worth it

Boarding at Epsom starts from Year 7, full or weekday.

Rooms were sometimes shared with one other, sometimes with two. And what mattered most turned out to be which languages her roommates spoke.

Sharing with two Chinese students: she began following everyday Mandarin conversation naturally
Sharing with a Korean student: from no Korean at all, she reached the point of following a fair amount of everyday speech

Not from lessons — from living. That is something day school simply cannot produce. For a family who chose the country for its languages, it exceeded what we expected.

*Her bed in the boarding house. The soft toys kept multiplying.*

*Seen from above, this is how many there were.*

6. Where boarding fell short

Honestly: the food is not good.

A lot of it is oily, and it would be hard to call it healthy. There was also an episode of food poisoning during her time there.

When you are handing over a growing child, this is not a detail to wave away. School tours steer you towards buildings and facilities, but if boarding is a possibility, ask to see the catering too. That is what six years has taught us.

7. Our younger child went to a different school

When our elder daughter was in Year 3, the younger one was two — and at the time, there was nowhere that would take her.

When she turned three and was old enough to start, we did not send her to Epsom. She began in Pre-school at King Henry VIII College Malaysia (British School Cyberjaya), close to where we lived.

The reason was simple: Epsom is about forty minutes away. That is one thing for an older child; for a three-year-old, every day, it was not realistic.

So our two daughters went to different schools. Drop-offs split in two directions, and the school calendars never lined up. It was more work. Even so, I think choosing around the younger child's limits was the right call.

With a gap between siblings, you cannot assume both will start at the same school at the same time. When you are working out when to move, check the youngest age each school accepts — and how long a commute the younger one can actually stand — before you commit. It is more realistic to assume from the start that one school may not fit the whole family.

*King Henry VIII College Malaysia. Being close to home was the deciding factor.*

*The courtyard and play equipment, built for children as young as Pre-school.*

*Play equipment in the grounds, with the school name on the building behind.*

*This is where our younger daughter spent her breaks.*

*With a classmate. The nationalities are just as mixed here.*

*At home. Her uniform is light blue — her sister's was navy.*

*A self-portrait our younger daughter drew, put up in her classroom.*

8. Q&A on choosing a school

Q. What mattered most in choosing? A. How much Mandarin was in the timetable. We moved to Malaysia for English plus Mandarin, so that came first.

Q. Why a campus out of town rather than central KL? A. Space, and boarding. There are good schools in central KL, but they tend to be cramped and to have no boarding. We wanted to keep the secondary-years option open.

Q. How much did the fees change? A. From about ¥1.5 million a year at the start to more than double over six years, as year-group rises, a stronger ringgit and inflation stacked up. Boarding fees came on top during the boarding period.

Q. Does boarding suit children? A. For ours it was worth doing — picking up Mandarin and Korean from roommates was something day school never would have produced. But check the catering.