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Event guide

EARCOS Conference: A Deep Account-Planning Guide for EdTech Teams

Reviewed byJohn Thomas, Founder, SchoolIntellast reviewed May 2026

EARCOS is the regional council of ~150 international schools across East and Southeast Asia, founded in 1968 and headquartered in Manila. Its two flagship events — the EARCOS Leadership Conference (ELC, ~1,300 heads and senior leaders, late October/early November) and the EARCOS Teachers' Conference (ETC, ~2,000+ educators, late March) — are the annual moments when the regional network convenes. For EdTech vendors and agencies, EARCOS is the closest thing Asia has to a single calendar, member directory, and leadership network. This guide explains EARCOS's history, member geography, ELC vs ETC, how EARCOS differs from FOBISIA and CIS, post-COVID Asia market dynamics, and how to turn an EARCOS membership list into a sourced, ranked account-planning workflow rather than a generic exhibitor brochure.

Build an EARCOS target marketSee data sources ↓

EARCOS member schools

~150 across East and Southeast Asia

Source: EARCOS member directory (2026)

Combined enrolment at EARCOS schools

~150,000+ students

Source: EARCOS public statements + member school filings

EARCOS Leadership Conference (ELC) attendance

~1,300 leaders annually

Source: EARCOS ELC programme history

EARCOS Teachers' Conference (ETC) attendance

~2,000+ educators annually

Source: EARCOS ETC programme history

Founding year

1968

Source: EARCOS About page

Headquarters

Manila, Philippines

Source: EARCOS About page

Featured schools

A representative slice of the market

International School of Beijing (ISB)

Beijing, China · IB / American · WASC + CIS · ~1,800 students

Anchor American-pattern school in Beijing; long-standing EARCOS member. Strong fit for IB DP, AP, and digital-learning vendors. Group-style reporting on annual leadership transitions.

ISB site + EARCOS directory + WASC/CIS

Verified

Western Academy of Beijing (WAB)

Beijing, China · IB continuum (PYP/MYP/DP) · CIS · ~1,500 students

Full IB continuum and well-regarded innovation budget. EARCOS host school history; pair outreach with IB coordinator and head of digital learning.

WAB site + IBO + CIS

Verified

Shanghai American School (SAS) — Pudong + Puxi

Shanghai, China · American + AP + IB DP · WASC · ~2,800 students across two campuses

Two-campus account; one of the largest American international schools globally. Procurement at HQ-level — sell once, deploy twice.

SAS site + ACAMIS + WASC

Verified

Hong Kong International School (HKIS)

Hong Kong · American + AP · WASC + CIS · ~2,800 students

Anchor American school in Hong Kong; high US-curriculum and AP relevance. Long history of EARCOS leadership participation.

HKIS site + EARCOS directory

Verified

Singapore American School (SAS)

Singapore · American + AP + IB DP · WASC + CIS · ~3,900 students

Largest single-campus American international school in the world. Top-tier fit for any US-anchored EdTech vendor; flagship reference account.

SAS site + EARCOS + WASC

Verified

United World College of South East Asia (UWCSEA) — Dover + East

Singapore · IB continuum · CIS · ~5,500 students across two campuses

Two-campus IB powerhouse and the largest IB World School in Asia by some measures. IB-specific assessment, EAL, and well-being vendors should treat as priority.

UWCSEA site + IBO + CIS

Verified

International School Bangkok (ISB)

Bangkok, Thailand · American + AP + IB DP · WASC + CIS · ~1,800 students

Long-established American-pattern school; Thailand market anchor. ISB hosts educator events and tends to early-adopt classroom tools.

ISB site + EARCOS directory + WASC

Verified

NIST International School

Bangkok, Thailand · IB continuum (PYP/MYP/DP) · CIS · ~1,700 students

Thailand's largest full-continuum IB school. IB coordinator and head of teaching-and-learning are paired buying influences for curriculum and assessment vendors.

NIST site + IBO + CIS

Verified

United Nations International School of Hanoi (UNIS Hanoi)

Hanoi, Vietnam · IB continuum · CIS · ~1,100 students

UN-affiliated, mission-driven school. EARCOS speaker and host history; high relevance for sustainability, well-being, and EAL vendors.

UNIS Hanoi site + IBO

Verified

Saigon South International School (SSIS)

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam · American + AP · WASC + CIS · ~1,100 students

Anchor US-curriculum school in southern Vietnam; growing demand for AP, MAP/NWEA assessment, and college counselling platforms.

SSIS site + WASC

Verified

Jakarta Intercultural School (JIS)

Jakarta, Indonesia · American + AP + IB DP · WASC · ~2,100 students

Indonesia's largest international school. Multi-decade EARCOS member; influential voice in ELC programme committees.

JIS site + EARCOS directory

Verified

International School Manila (ISM)

Manila, Philippines · American + AP + IB DP · WASC + CIS · ~2,200 students

Hosts EARCOS HQ relationships in Manila. AP and IB DP overlap supports dual-message outreach for assessment and college-counselling vendors.

ISM site + EARCOS HQ proximity

Verified

Korea International School (KIS) — Pangyo + Jeju

South Korea · American + AP + IB DP · WASC · ~1,500 students across two campuses

Two-campus group; Jeju Global Education City context creates additional vendor relevance. Korean-curriculum overlap not present — purely international.

KIS site + WASC

Verified

Seoul Foreign School (SFS)

Seoul, South Korea · British + IB DP · CIS · ~1,500 students

Unusual British-pattern anchor in Seoul (most EARCOS Korea schools are American-pattern). Strong fit for British-curriculum and IB DP vendors.

SFS site + CIS + EARCOS directory

Verified

American School in Japan (ASIJ)

Tokyo, Japan · American + AP · WASC · ~1,650 students

Japan's most established American international school. Long EARCOS history; influential leadership voice in regional programmes.

ASIJ site + WASC

Verified

Yokohama International School (YIS)

Yokohama, Japan · IB continuum · CIS · ~700 students

One of the oldest international schools in Asia (founded 1924); compact campus, but high IB-network influence at EARCOS events.

YIS site + IBO + CIS

Verified

Taipei American School (TAS)

Taipei, Taiwan · American + AP · WASC · ~2,300 students

Anchor American school in Taiwan. Strong tech-purchasing budget; pair AP and post-AP college-prep vendors with the head of teaching and learning.

TAS site + WASC

Verified

What EARCOS is — and why it sits at the centre of Asia's international-school market

The East Asia Regional Council of Schools (EARCOS) is the regional association for international schools across East and Southeast Asia. Founded in 1968 and headquartered in Manila, EARCOS now serves roughly 150 member schools spanning more than fifteen countries — from Mongolia and Bangladesh in the north and west, through Greater China, Korea, and Japan, down across the ASEAN belt to Indonesia and Timor-Leste. Its About page describes a non-profit mandate to advance international education through professional learning, school accreditation support, and a regional voice for English-medium international schools.

For EdTech sales and marketing teams, EARCOS is more than an association. It is the closest thing East and Southeast Asia has to a single calendar, a single member directory, and a single leadership network. Two flagship events — the EARCOS Leadership Conference (ELC) and the EARCOS Teachers' Conference (ETC) — gather thousands of school leaders and educators each year, and the EARCOS Weekly Memo publishes leadership appointments and school news in near real time. If you sell into Asian international schools, EARCOS is the planning calendar your accounts are already living on.

This guide explains what EARCOS is, who its members are, how the two flagship conferences differ, how EARCOS contrasts with associations like FOBISIA and CIS, and — most importantly — how vendor and agency teams should turn an EARCOS membership list into an account-planning workflow rather than a generic exhibitor brochure. For the broader Asia school landscape, also see the international school market intelligence hub and the school intelligence for EdTech agencies hub.

Founded

1968

Source: EARCOS About

HQ

Manila, Philippines

Source: EARCOS About

Member schools

~150

Source: EARCOS member directory

Origin story — from Cold War US bases to Asia's largest English-medium network

EARCOS started in 1968 as a small council of school leaders trying to coordinate professional development across an awkward geography. Many founding schools traced their existence to US military bases, diplomatic missions, or mid-century corporate expatriate populations across Japan, Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Vietnam. As Asian capital cities urbanised and global mobility multiplied, those schools grew into full international schools serving expat, returnee, and host-country families — and the council expanded with them.

Today EARCOS is a non-profit governed by a board of head-of-school members, with a small full-time secretariat in Manila. It does not accredit schools (that is CIS, WASC, and NEASC) and it is not curriculum-specific (that is FOBISIA for British and IBO for IB). Its remit is professional learning, advocacy, and connection. That is why the ELC and ETC matter: they are the moments the regional network physically convenes.

Why EARCOS punches above its size

EARCOS schools are not the largest segment of Asian international education by raw count — China alone has more than 800 schools labelled 'international' if you count host-curriculum bilingual schools. But EARCOS members are disproportionately the English-medium, expatriate-and-returnee schools with mature procurement, multi-year curriculum strategies, and per-student technology budgets that look more like US independent schools than Asian state schools. For most international EdTech vendors, EARCOS is the practical universe.

Member geography — where the ~150 schools actually are

EARCOS membership is broad geographically but heavily concentrated in a handful of metro areas. The EARCOS member directory lists schools by country and provides a curriculum and accreditation snapshot for each. Cross-checked against country-level directories like the International Schools Database, a clear picture emerges: Greater China, Korea, and Japan dominate the member count, with Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines forming a strong second cluster. Singapore, Malaysia, and Taiwan are smaller but high-revenue. A long tail covers Mongolia, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Bangladesh, and Timor-Leste.

For EdTech account planning, country count is misleading on its own. China has many EARCOS members but Singapore's six member schools collectively serve roughly 15,000 students because of UWCSEA's two-campus footprint and Singapore American School's scale. Weight your account list by enrolment, not flag count.

Largest cluster

China + Hong Kong (~38 schools)

Source: EARCOS directory

Smallest single country

Mongolia / Bangladesh / Timor-Leste

Source: EARCOS directory

Highest students per member

Singapore (~2,500 avg)

Source: School site enrolment data

EARCOS member schools by country (approximate)

EARCOS member geography skews toward Greater China, Korea, Japan, and the larger ASEAN markets. Vendors planning regional expansion should weight schools in China, Korea, and Thailand first by raw count, then re-weight by enrolment size and curriculum fit.

Country-by-country read for vendor priority

These are SchoolIntel's working notes per major EARCOS market. They are the same notes we hand reps when they ask 'where do I start in Asia?'

  • China + Hong Kong (~38 schools): the largest cluster. Beijing and Shanghai concentrate the flagship American-pattern and IB schools (ISB, WAB, SAS Pudong/Puxi, Yew Chung). Membership overlaps with ACAMIS. Regulatory shifts since 2021 changed which families can enrol; vendor pitches should reflect a smaller, more selective student body than the pre-COVID era.
  • South Korea (~16 schools): Seoul Foreign School, KIS Pangyo + Jeju, and Chadwick International are anchors. Jeju Global Education City is a deliberate cluster of three EARCOS schools — vendor outreach can target three accounts in one trip.
  • Japan (~14 schools): ASIJ, Yokohama International, Saint Maur, and Canadian Academy Kobe are well-established. Japan moves slowly on procurement; multi-year ROI cases work better than quarterly campaigns.
  • Thailand (~13 schools): ISB Bangkok, NIST, KIS International, and Bangkok Patana (which also belongs to FOBISIA) form the spine. Thailand is one of the most active EdTech-buying markets in EARCOS by per-student spend.
  • Indonesia (~12 schools): Jakarta Intercultural School, ACG, Australian Independent School, and the Bali international cluster. Post-pandemic Jakarta enrolment recovered faster than most expected; treat as a growth market.
  • Vietnam (~11 schools): UNIS Hanoi, SSIS, ISHCMC, and BIS HCMC. Vietnam is the fastest-growing English-medium market in EARCOS; new campuses opened in HCMC and Hanoi in 2024–2026.
  • Philippines (~10 schools): ISM, Brent, Cebu International, and Faith Academy. Manila proximity to EARCOS HQ creates outsized programme-committee influence relative to school count.
  • Malaysia (~8 schools): Mont'Kiara International School, Garden, ISKL, and the Iskandar/Marlborough cluster. Malaysia mixes EARCOS, FOBISIA, and CIS strongly.
  • Singapore (~6 schools): Smallest by count, largest by students. UWCSEA, SAS, Stamford American, Tanglin Trust, and Canadian International School. Singapore EARCOS schools are the highest-revenue accounts in the network.

ELC vs ETC — two conferences, two completely different audiences

EARCOS runs two flagship conferences each year, and they are not interchangeable. Vendor and agency teams that show up to the wrong one waste a year of pipeline. Here's the practical difference.

The EARCOS Leadership Conference (ELC) — see the official ELC programme page — happens in late October or early November, typically in Bangkok or Kota Kinabalu. About 1,300 attendees: heads of school, deputy heads, principals, business managers, board chairs, IB and curriculum coordinators with leadership remit, and partner organisations. Sessions skew strategic — board governance, finance, accreditation cycles, head-of-school transitions, and AI policy. This is the room where multi-year contracts are framed.

The EARCOS Teachers' Conference (ETC) — see the official ETC programme page — happens in late March, typically in Bangkok. About 2,000+ attendees: classroom teachers, instructional coaches, department heads, librarians, and counsellors. Sessions skew practitioner — classroom strategies, subject-specific pedagogy, well-being, EAL/ELL, AI in the classroom, and instructional coaching. This is the room where products are evaluated by the people who will use them.

ELC attendance

~1,300 leaders

Source: EARCOS ELC programme

ETC attendance

~2,000+ educators

Source: EARCOS ETC programme

Combined annual reach

~3,300+ EARCOS-affiliated educators

Source: EARCOS programme history

Pick the right conference for your product

These are the patterns SchoolIntel sees across EdTech vendors selling into Asia:

  • Sell ELC first if: your product is a multi-year platform decision (MIS/SIS, identity, AI policy, school-wide assessment, board-level analytics, capital projects). The buying committee starts with the head of school.
  • Sell ETC first if: your product is a pilot-friendly classroom or department tool (formative assessment, EAL platforms, reading programmes, well-being curricula, classroom AI assistants). Teachers and coaches drive evaluation.
  • Sell both if: your product needs leadership permission and teacher adoption — most curriculum and assessment products fall here. Use ELC to brief leaders, ETC to seed practitioner pilots six months later.
  • Skip both if: your product is purely operational (cleaning, catering, transport, facilities). Asian regional school operators source those locally, not at EARCOS.

What sessions actually look like

ELC sessions are 60–90 minute workshops led by heads of school, board chairs, accreditation officers, and consulting firms. Strands typically include leadership, governance, finance, well-being, sustainability, AI, and inclusion. ETC sessions are 50–75 minute pre-conference institutes plus shorter strands, led by classroom teachers and instructional coaches. Strands typically include literacy, mathematics, sciences, EAL, well-being, technology, and pedagogy.

Both conferences include a small exhibitor area, but the value for vendors is rarely the booth. It is the speaker slots, sponsored institutes, and after-hours dinners. Plan accordingly.

How EARCOS differs from FOBISIA, CIS, ACAMIS, and other Asia networks

EARCOS is the most-confused Asia association in vendor pitch decks. The simplest mental model: EARCOS is a regional professional-learning council. It is curriculum-agnostic, broadly geographical, and event-led. Other associations have narrower remits.

The Federation of British International Schools in Asia (FOBISIA) serves only British-pattern schools across Asia. Its members tend to follow BSO inspection, Cambridge International, and COBIS accreditation. Many big Asia schools — Bangkok Patana, Garden International School KL, Tanglin Trust Singapore — belong to both FOBISIA and EARCOS. They are not substitutes; they are complementary.

The Council of International Schools (CIS) is a global accreditor and member services body. Roughly two-thirds of EARCOS members hold CIS accreditation. Where EARCOS runs the events, CIS runs the accreditation cycle. The accreditation cycle is what creates buying signals (curriculum reviews, self-studies, action plans). Vendors should track both.

The Association of China and Mongolia International Schools (ACAMIS) is a smaller regional sub-association covering Greater China and Mongolia. Most major Beijing and Shanghai schools belong to both EARCOS and ACAMIS. ACAMIS sports and arts events are influential at the school level but are not commercially focused. NEASC and WASC accredit many EARCOS American-pattern schools and run their own conferences in the US, separate from EARCOS.

Practical overlap map

The associations overlap more than they compete. SchoolIntel uses this rough mapping when scoring an Asian school's source confidence:

  • EARCOS membership: broad relevance — confirms English-medium, expatriate-pattern international school identity. Use as the universe filter for Asia campaigns.
  • FOBISIA membership: curriculum filter — confirms British-pattern. Combine with BSO and Cambridge for British-curriculum vendor outreach.
  • CIS accreditation: quality filter — confirms accredited governance, curriculum, and safeguarding standards. Buying signals during 5- and 10-year cycles.
  • ACAMIS membership: geography filter — confirms Greater China + Mongolia community participation.
  • WASC / NEASC accreditation: curriculum filter — confirms US-pattern accreditation. Pair with AP and US college-counselling vendor messaging.

Post-COVID Asia international school dynamics — and what they mean for EARCOS accounts

The Asian international school market that EARCOS schools operate in changed structurally between 2020 and 2025. Vendor pitches that still rely on pre-pandemic assumptions read as out of touch. Three shifts matter most.

First, China. Regulatory changes in 2021 — most notably the so-called 'double-reduction' policies and tighter rules on foreign-passport-holder enrolment in some city-tier categories — meaningfully shrank the addressable student population for many EARCOS schools in Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. Some schools shed 15–25% of enrolment between 2019 and 2023 before stabilising. Heads of school and CFOs are still recovering financial flexibility. Vendor pitches should not project 2019 budgets onto 2026 reality.

Second, Southeast Asia rotation. Capital and families that left China between 2020 and 2023 partially rotated into Singapore, Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City, Bali, and Kuala Lumpur. EARCOS schools in those cities reported waitlists at premium tier. The growth-market story today is ASEAN, not Greater China.

Third, AI policy. EARCOS schools were among the first internationally to publish school-wide AI guidelines in 2023–2024. The EARCOS Weekly Memo regularly carries head-of-school posts on AI integration. ELC 2024 and 2025 dedicated multiple strands to AI policy, academic integrity, and assessment redesign. AI vendors who lead with policy support — not novelty features — outperform.

China enrolment shock (2019→2023)

~15–25% drop at many EARCOS Greater China schools

Source: School annual reports + ISC Research commentary

ASEAN waitlist signal

Singapore + Bangkok + KL + HCMC = active capacity expansion

Source: School site announcements + new-campus filings

AI policy maturity

Most ELC/ETC strands address AI by 2025

Source: EARCOS programme archive

How signals reorder an EARCOS account list

A static EARCOS member list will not tell you any of this. SchoolIntel re-reads the inputs each week and resequences the queue around the signals that matter post-pandemic:

  • New head of school: first 100 days are vendor-friendly. The EARCOS Weekly Memo and TIE Online appointments are the canonical sources for leadership-change tracking.
  • Capacity expansion: new campus or new building announcements typically signal full-stack IT, curriculum, and staffing buys 9–12 months ahead.
  • Accreditation cycle: CIS, WASC, or NEASC self-study windows surface curriculum and assessment re-evaluation. Cross-reference the British schools overseas source guide and the IB World Schools source guide for parallel patterns.
  • AI policy publication: schools that publish AI guidelines are months ahead of pilot procurement for AI-aware curriculum and assessment tools.
  • Recruitment-fair posting: a new senior role on Search Associates or TIE Online is a leading indicator of category need.

How vendors should target EARCOS member schools

EARCOS is one of the few networks where a small, well-cited account list outperforms broad outreach by an order of magnitude. The cost of a generic pitch in this network is high: heads of school talk to each other, and a bad EARCOS pitch in October circulates by ELC dinner, not by survey response.

The playbook below is what we hand vendor and agency teams when they ask how to convert EARCOS access into pipeline. It is not a brochure summary — it is a sequence.

  • Step 1 — narrow before you broaden. Filter the ~150 EARCOS members down to a 30–50 account list using curriculum (IB / British / American), enrolment size, country cluster, and accreditor (CIS / WASC / NEASC). The remaining 100 schools are not bad accounts; they are not your first-touch accounts.
  • Step 2 — match to the right conference. If your buyer is a head of school or CFO, ELC is the moment. If your buyer is a department head or instructional coach, ETC is the moment. If both, plan for both — six months apart — not one trip with a generic deck.
  • Step 3 — earn programme presence, not just booth space. EARCOS reviews session proposals through programme committees made up of member-school leaders. A co-presented session with a member head or coordinator is worth ten exhibitor mentions. Submit early; programme committees review proposals six months out.
  • Step 4 — pre-event personalisation. Reach out to the 30–50 target heads in September (for ELC) or January (for ETC) with a specific session, accreditation context, or AI policy reference. Generic 'see you at EARCOS' emails get archived; cited pre-event briefs get meetings.
  • Step 5 — post-event role hand-off. After the head says yes, the deal lives or dies on practitioner endorsement. Map your post-ELC follow-up to the actual users — IB coordinator, head of digital learning, EAL/ELL coordinator. See the head of digital learning page, IB coordinator page, and EAL coordinator page.
  • Step 6 — connect EARCOS to the rest of the calendar. Asia-buying schools also pay attention to GESS Dubai, BSME conference, and the COBIS annual conference. Multi-event continuity creates compounding pipeline.

Sources EARCOS-savvy teams cross-reference

These are the inputs SchoolIntel reads continuously, so an EARCOS account brief is not a one-time scrape:

  • EARCOS member directory + Weekly Memo: membership confirmation and live leadership-change feed.
  • School websites: leadership pages, strategic plans, AI policies, curriculum pages — the most-current truth about what a school is investing in.
  • CIS / WASC / NEASC accreditation pages: accreditation cycle context drives 5- and 10-year buying windows.
  • Recruitment fairs: Search Associates and TIE Online posts surface category need months before procurement.
  • Country-level directories: the International Schools Database and similar consumer-facing directories cross-confirm enrolment and curriculum.
  • Annual research products like ISC Research: strong annual sizing context; built around an annual research cycle rather than weekly pipeline work — see the ISC Research alternative comparison for the workflow detail.

Build it yourself or use SchoolIntel

Everything in this guide is technically buildable from public sources. The EARCOS member directory, the Weekly Memo, school websites, CIS / WASC / NEASC pages, and recruitment-fair listings are all reachable. The honest question is whether your team should spend the time. Most don't — not because they can't, but because the integration, normalisation, and freshness work is more expensive than the data itself.

Two paths.

Build it yourself

Realistic effort to assemble an EARCOS-aligned target market that's defensible to a sales team:

  • Source inventory: 1–2 days to map the EARCOS directory, Weekly Memo, ELC + ETC programmes, country directories, CIS / WASC / NEASC pages, and recruitment fairs. Decide which to scrape and which to subscribe to.
  • Normalisation: 1–2 weeks to dedupe ~150 schools across English/local-language spelling variants, multi-campus accounts (UWCSEA, KIS, SAS Shanghai), and group naming. Asia is harder than Europe here because of multi-script names.
  • Role coverage: 1–2 weeks to scrape staff pages, infer titles to a buyer-role taxonomy, and verify emails (SMTP + 90-day re-check). EARCOS schools change leadership at higher annual rates than most US districts.
  • Signal layer: ongoing — weekly cron jobs against EARCOS Weekly Memo, TIE Online, Search Associates, and school sites. Engineering owns this in perpetuity.
  • Honest timeline: 1 FTE for ~6–8 weeks to build, then 0.25 FTE forever to maintain. Stops working the day that engineer leaves.

Use SchoolIntel

What you get without building any of the above:

  • Same-day target market: filter EARCOS members by country, curriculum, accreditor, enrolment, and signal — get a sourced list with cited reasons in one session.
  • Live source consensus: every school carries a confidence score across 8+ sources we read (EARCOS, school site, accreditor, directory, hiring boards, group pages, association calendars, news). You see which schools we trust and why.
  • Role coverage built in: staff lists are pre-mapped to a buying-role taxonomy across EAL, ELL, IB coordinator, and head of digital learning — with SMTP-verified contact data inside the product.
  • Weekly re-scored queue: we re-read the EARCOS Weekly Memo, recruitment fairs, and school sites every week. Your account list reorders itself; you don't rebuild it.
  • Cited reasons per account: every recommended target carries a paragraph explaining why now — backed by source URL, date, and signal type.
  • Compare paths: see the ISC Research alternative and the static school rosters alternative for side-by-side workflow detail.

Frequently asked questions

Questions this page answers

What is EARCOS and which countries does it cover?

The East Asia Regional Council of Schools (EARCOS) is a non-profit regional association of around 150 international schools across East and Southeast Asia. Its members span China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Mongolia, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Bangladesh, and Timor-Leste. Founded in 1968 and headquartered in Manila, EARCOS focuses on professional learning, school leadership development, and convening events — not accreditation. See the EARCOS About page and the EARCOS member directory for the canonical list.

What is the difference between the EARCOS Leadership Conference (ELC) and the EARCOS Teachers' Conference (ETC)?

The ELC is held in late October or early November — typically in Bangkok or Kota Kinabalu — and gathers about 1,300 heads of school, deputy heads, principals, business managers, and board chairs for strategic and governance-level sessions. The ETC is held in late March, typically in Bangkok, and gathers 2,000+ classroom teachers, instructional coaches, and department heads for practitioner-focused workshops on pedagogy, EAL/ELL, well-being, and AI in the classroom. Vendors should pick the conference that matches their buyer; products that need both leadership permission and teacher adoption should plan for both, six months apart.

How does EARCOS differ from FOBISIA?

EARCOS is curriculum-agnostic and broadly geographical — it covers IB, American, British, and other English-medium international schools across all of East and Southeast Asia. FOBISIA is curriculum-specific — it serves only British-pattern schools in Asia. Many big Asia schools (Bangkok Patana, Garden International KL, Tanglin Trust Singapore) belong to both. Treat them as complementary, not competitive — FOBISIA confirms British curriculum, EARCOS confirms regional professional-learning participation. For British-curriculum vendors, both plus BSO inspection and COBIS form the source stack.

How does EARCOS differ from CIS (Council of International Schools)?

EARCOS is a regional professional-learning council with no accreditation function. CIS is a global accreditor and member-services body. Roughly two-thirds of EARCOS schools also hold CIS accreditation — the two memberships overlap heavily but mean different things. EARCOS membership tells you a school participates in regional events and leadership networks; CIS accreditation tells you the school's governance, curriculum, and safeguarding meet a published international standard. SchoolIntel reads both as separate source signals when scoring an account.

When and where do the EARCOS conferences take place each year?

The ELC typically runs Wednesday to Saturday in late October or early November, alternating recently between Bangkok (Shangri-La) and Kota Kinabalu (Sutera Harbour). The ETC typically runs Thursday to Saturday in late March, almost always at the Shangri-La Bangkok. Both add pre-conference institutes the day before the main programme. Dates and venues are confirmed on the EARCOS events hub each year. Vendors should book hotel blocks 6–9 months ahead — the host hotels sell out, and overflow hotels add 30 minutes to every conversation.

Which schools are the most influential at EARCOS programme committees?

Programme-committee influence rotates, but a recurring set of schools tends to host EARCOS-affiliated institutes and supply session proposers: International School of Manila and Brent (Manila proximity), International School Bangkok and NIST (Bangkok proximity for ETC), International School of Beijing and Western Academy of Beijing (mature professional-learning programmes), Shanghai American School and Hong Kong International School (scale), United World College of South East Asia and Singapore American School (largest regional networks), and Jakarta Intercultural School (long-tenured regional voice). For agencies, co-presenting with one of these schools is high-leverage. See the EARCOS member directory for the full list.

How did the post-COVID Asia market change for EARCOS schools?

Three structural shifts. First, mainland China enrolment shrank 15–25% at many EARCOS schools between 2019 and 2023 because of regulatory change and travel disruption — vendor pitches projecting 2019 budgets onto 2026 reality fall flat. Second, a portion of that capital and family base rotated into Singapore, Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City, Bali, and Kuala Lumpur — those EARCOS schools reported waitlists at premium tier. Third, AI policy moved up the leadership agenda quickly; the EARCOS Weekly Memo and ELC programme strands now treat AI as a first-class topic. Vendors who acknowledge this state of the world earn the meeting; vendors who don't, don't.

Does SchoolIntel publish personal contact details for EARCOS staff on this page?

No. Public pages explain methodology, sources, and account strategy. Personal contact data — names, emails, phone numbers — stays inside the authenticated SchoolIntel product, governed by SchoolIntel's privacy controls and access/removal request process. Public sources cited here (EARCOS member directory, school websites, CIS / WASC / NEASC pages, recruitment fairs) are linked so teams can build their own records as well.

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