Global Services in Education (GSE) is developing Meridian International School in Vientiane, Lao PDR, and will operate it from its opening in September 2027. The school sits on the grounds of Long Vien Golf Club, with a golf academy built into its programme.
GSE has worked on the project for the past year with the school’s founding owners, under a long-term Education Advisory and School Management Agreement. The agreement takes GSE from feasibility and design through to opening, then into the management of the school.
A school built around one idea
Meridian is designed around what GSE calls the intelligent performer. That means a young person who thinks carefully, performs under pressure and understands how they learn. Sport at its best teaches composure, honesty and resilience. A school can build those qualities on purpose when sport is part of the design from the first drawing, and Meridian is the first school GSE has planned around that idea from the ground up.
The academic programme comes first. Meridian follows a British curriculum leading to IGCSE and A-Level, taught in English.
A performance golf programme open to every student
Meridian’s golf academy is built to the standard of a serious performance programme. Students train with the school’s own coaching team, led by a Head of Golf, on a roofed putting green, more than ten hitting bays facing the Long Vien range and dedicated simulator rooms, with the Long Vien course on the doorstep.
Players on the Performance Pathway work with the tools used in professional golf: launch monitors that measure every strike, 3D swing analysis, AI-supported video review and on-course data that shows where shots are being won and lost. Coach and player use that information to build an individual training plan covering competition, academic study and wellbeing, with a timetable that allows for tournaments and travel. The ambition is to develop the next generation of elite golfers in Asia, with a pathway into competitive golf and university scholarships.
The same coaching serves every student. Golf is part of PE for every child, and the Academy gives anyone who loves the game more time on the course, house competitions and inter-school play, whatever their level. For many, it will become a game they play for life.
Opening with the youngest year groups
Meridian opens as a day school for Nursery to Year 3 and grows towards Sixth Form in the years that follow. Boarding will be introduced in later years as the school grows.
Where the project stands
Market research, feasibility and financial modelling are complete. The school’s identity and educational design are in place, and GSE has worked with the project’s design team on the campus plan. Attention has now turned to people. The first senior appointment is a Founding Head of Early Years and Lower Primary, who will shape the curriculum, routines and team for the opening year groups. Role details and applications are on the Tes advert.
Founder-led
The school’s founder set the ambition for Meridian: a sports-integrated international school for families across South East Asia and the region. GSE brings the educational and operational expertise to deliver it.
Greg Parry, Co-Founder and CEO of GSE, said: “We want Meridian to produce some of the best young golfers in Asia. That starts with a six-year-old learning to call a penalty on herself long before she can hit a ball a hundred metres. The honesty and composure that make a great golfer are what we want running through the whole school.”
Duncan Douglas, GSE Senior Director and project lead, said the feasibility findings shaped the design brief. “The demand is real. Families in Laos and across the region want serious schooling and structured sport together, and right now they cannot get that in one place. That is the gap we are building for.”
Duncan leads each stage on the ground, working directly with the founding owners and in regular contact with the team in Vientiane as the school moves into pre-opening.
Meridian builds on GSE’s work on sport-led schools. Since 2011, GSE has delivered more than 60 school and education projects across 28 countries. More about the school is at meridianschool.la.