Brillantmont International School

Brillantmont International School was founded in 1882 in Lausanne and is, by its own account, the only Swiss boarding school to have been owned and run by the same family across five generations, now into its 5th generation under Anne Frei, who became Head of School in 2019. That unbroken family stewardship of nearly 150 years is the school's defining characteristic and sets it apart from the larger, corporately run international schools of the Lake Geneva region.

It is a small school by design, with around 80-90 boarding and day students drawn from roughly 30 nationalities, aged about 13-18 across Grades 8-12 (with a 13th-grade postgraduate term). Teaching is in English, with French taught to all as the host language and English support available where needed. Academically it follows the British IGCSE and A Level route, which it states is unique among Swiss boarding schools in its area, alongside an American-style High School Diploma. It does not offer the IB.

On quality assurance, the school holds dual international accreditation from NEASC and CIS, re-accredited in July 2023, and is a Cambridge Fellowship Centre, a founding member of Swiss Learning, and listed on the Swiss Private School Register. Switzerland has no graded national inspection regime, so there is no published verbatim rating band; assurance therefore rests on the depth of these accreditations rather than an inspected grade.

The honest trade-off is scale. The intimacy that lets every pupil be individually known also means narrower subject choice, small peer groups and no IB, and the school publishes no IGCSE or A Level results to independently verify outcomes. Fees are at the premium end (boarding around CHF 99,500-111,000 a year for 2026-2027). For families who actively want a small, stable, family-run home rather than a large campus, that is the point rather than a drawback.