Kinderville Nova is a school and kindergarten in Phuket for children aged 2–11. The Rawai campus has the kindergarten and Year 1, the Chalong campus has Year 2–6.
A British programme under a Thai Ministry of Education licence, aligned with Cambridge standards. Its job is to give the language children go on learning in: the whole language, science and international maths terminology, academic reading and writing.
Peterson mathematics, literacy and Russian language, reading and literature, science: the language of thinking and literacy — with them the door to the Russian programme stays open.
A child can arrive without English. In Year 3–6 English is split into groups by proficiency, and a newcomer starts in their own — where they understand the lesson. In the kindergarten and Year 1–2 the teacher supports the newcomer within the class, and a booster — extra lessons for those who arrive without the language — helps them catch up.
4 000 ฿ raised — it bought a tree that now grows in the school yard.
Each subject in the timetable has its own job: what it gives the child now and which door it keeps open. 20 hours of core study a week — four lessons every day.
Logical and abstract thinking, a mathematical foundation. The child derives the rule themselves rather than memorising a ready one.
The language of thinking and literacy. It keeps the door to the Russian programme open.
The full Russian-programme course. We put special effort into children reading with pleasure and understanding what they read.
Depth of understanding: the child grasps the essence of a phenomenon in their native language.
The whole language: reading and writing, grammar, vocabulary.
How to agree in a group, share work and see things through.
The country the child lives in.
A concept worked through in Russian in the morning gets international terminology and the formats of the British programme. This prepares for Checkpoint — the international end-of-primary tests — and for continuing in English-language secondary school.
A different programme and a different job: more experiments and observation, and the whole language of science is English. This is how a child builds the language people learn in, not just chat in.
The same programme, more speaking practice.
Classes are not split by programme: all morning, Light and full-day children learn together. The afternoon is the full-day programme — what it includes.
The kindergarten, Year 1 and Year 2 have a different set of subjects and load — how those years work is below, in "Stages".
About the environment, honestly. Our families have no English environment around the school: home and the neighbourhood are Russian, and here a child gets English from lessons and the afternoon. That is why the language sits in the main timetable, is split by level and continues in subjects — the result depends on volume, and home acts as a buffer.
At two or three nobody sits a child down to letters. The child plays, learns to talk, gets used to a routine and to other children — that is the work of this age. We develop speech in two languages; a native-speaker teacher works in the kindergarten. Group assistants are Thai teachers with a teaching degree; they speak English with the children. The youngest group always has two adults. The first weeks are adaptation, with a psychologist nearby. The kindergarten is more than ten years old.
Life is the same — lots of play and talk. In Reception we start introducing letters and sounds of both languages — as in England, where phonics runs all year, teaching reading through the link between sound and letter. Russian reading follows the Melnikova method — first the child hears the sound, then recognises its letter on paper. By the end of the year children read short words. Maths for the youngest is Peterson's "Igralochka", science in two languages.
The first of two preparatory years. The child is already a pupil — following the British Year 1 programme and the Russian senior-kindergarten programme. They study on the kindergarten grounds, where there is more space and room to play. There is a rest during the day and no homework. Children study English together as a class — the teacher adapts a newcomer within the group, and we recommend a booster, extra lessons to catch up faster. Maths is two Peterson lessons in Russian with an English layer on top.
The second preparatory year. The child moves to the school campus: among schoolchildren, with the status of a pupil, and that pulls them up. The routine is a school one, with a rest in the middle of the day; there is almost no homework, only English possibly. The lessons are full ones: Russian pre-school literacy, British Year 2 English, Peterson maths with an English layer — less of it than in Year 3, and more play.
What grows over this year. Voluntary attention — the ability to concentrate when needed, not when it is interesting. Being able to sit through a whole lesson, working from an adult's instruction, responsibility for one's things and one's task. And school becomes one's own place.
That is what the year is for: our first-grade threshold is high — deliberately — so we prefer a run-up to a leap.
Real academic load starts here: copybooks, reading technique, more independence. Russian — copybooks and "writing with windows": the child leaves a window where unsure of a letter, and we teach checking instead of guessing. Maths — Peterson in Russian plus an English layer. From Year 3 English is split by proficiency: a newcomer from Russia and a child who already speaks study in different groups.
The British programme for Year 4–6 and the Russian one for grades 2–4. English by levels, aiming at the international young learners' exams YLE (Flyers, Key). Maths continues in two languages and leads to Checkpoint, the end-of-primary tests. What the child leaves with → Results and next steps.
How many children in a group: 8–14 in the kindergarten depending on age, up to 16 in Year 1–2, from 9 to 18 per lesson in Year 3–6. English and maths are split by level, and those groups are smaller.
Children are welcomed from 8:00, with breakfast before lessons.
Lessons start at 8:45: a circle with the curator and fifteen minutes of reading, every day. Then four core lessons while heads are fresh.
Lunch and homework: children do it at school, every day, and it is the child's responsibility, not the parents'. On the Light programme part of the English tasks goes home — here is why.
Science and maths in English, English language, workshops and sport of choice. Breaks, lunch and an afternoon snack between lessons: the school feeds children four times a day, all food from our own kitchen. The day closes with a short circle with the curator: what went well today.
Lessons end at 16:30; until 17:00 — games and getting ready to go home. After-school care runs until 19:00.
In the kindergarten and Year 1 the day is gentler: more play and personal space, a rest in the middle of the day. Year 2 has a school routine, but the midday rest remains.
A child on the Light programme goes home at 14:00 — after lessons, lunch and homework.
In Peterson's lessons children arrive at the rule themselves rather than receiving and memorising it.
They split the task, agree and bring the result together — Soft Skills teaches this separately.
Mastery and effort are assessed separately, on four levels: you can see exactly what the child can do and how much effort they put in. We do not rank children.
Every day, in the middle of the day.
What parents see. The curator leads the class all year and sends a weekly review: what the class lived through and studied; if you have questions, the curator is in touch. Three times a year there is a review of the child's development: in October, December and June. Parents see grades and reviews in the school's Mojo app.
We deliberately take children for whom learning is harder: a different pace, speech difficulties, anxiety after a move. What we have for this:
And if it is too easy. English is split by level, and a strong child works in their own group. The criteria have a top level — it is about going beyond the task, not about speed; and we ask children to explain a solution to someone else, because explaining is harder than solving.
We do not promise that a child will speak by a certain month or catch up with the class by a certain date. We promise the school's work — and that you will see it.
The school is growing, and part of the routine appears for the first time — from 1 September 2026.
Class of 2025. Our Year 6 graduates passed the VPR — the all-Russian national tests for the Russian programme — with "good" and "excellent" marks.
Checkpoint — international end-of-primary tests. By the end of Year 6 we lead the child to the checkpoints of both systems: Russian and British. In maths the school's route is established; in English we are taking it for the first time this year. A limit worth knowing in advance: the route is designed for a child who joined us no later than Year 4. If a child arrives in Year 5–6 without English, we go to the international tests only on an individual catch-up plan — we will discuss this at the meeting, before the contract.
Documents on leaving. School documents in English — a Certificate of Graduation and an Academic Transcript; with them the child moves on to an international secondary school.
Russian documents. The child takes the assessment for the Russian grade at our school, starting from Year 3; it is run by an accredited partner school in Russia, in the family-education format, with state-standard documents. The child covers the Russian programme to the extent this standard requires. Cost and decision deadline — on the fees page.
Both roads. After Year 6 a child can continue in an English-language secondary school (British, IB) or a Russian-language one. After a purely Russian primary, entering English-language secondary is hard; after a purely English one, returning to Russian is harder still: almost the whole programme is lost, maths falls behind, and language even more. We try not to close either road.
Secondary stage. Opening one is in the school's plans. We are not naming dates yet.
No need to choose. English is the main academic programme, the British one. In Russian the child keeps learning: Peterson maths, literacy, reading, literature. By the end of Year 6 we prepare for the checkpoints of both systems.
Speech and the language of study are different things, and we build both. First the whole language: reading and writing, grammar, vocabulary. Then hours of speaking practice. And on top — subjects taught in English: there the child learns in the language rather than studying it. We do not name timelines: the result depends on volume, and our families have no English environment outside school.
Thai language is not in the programme. There is a subject, Thai culture — one hour a week, in English.
Almost all our families speak Russian. "International" is about the programme, the licence and visas: a British programme, an international school licence, a student visa. Here a child gets English from lessons — home and the neighbourhood are Russian for our families. That is why English sits in the main timetable and is split by level, so everyone understands the lesson.
We received the international school licence in 2024. But the school is already alive: all stages from kindergarten to Year 6 work, there is a class of 2025 with results — see above on this page — and the class of 2026 includes children who have studied with us for more than a year. The kindergarten is more than ten years old. The school has no results tested over decades; it has a programme, a curator, grades in the app and what the children have already done.
One-off payments, discounts and what is included — on the fees page.
We show the classrooms, the kitchen and how the day goes — on the Chalong campus or by video call. The tour and the conversation about your child are led by the school's founder — who that is.