There Is No International School on This Coast

Families arriving on this coastline generally do the house first and the school second, on the reasonable assumption that a stretch of Athens this expensive will have schooling attached to it. It does not. There is no international school in Vouliagmeni, in Voula, in Kavouri or in Varkiza, and there is none inside the Municipality of Glyfada either — a town of 89,597 people.

That single fact reorganises the map. It means the school is not a feature of the neighbourhood you choose; it is a fixed point somewhere else, and the neighbourhood is chosen by how far you are willing to drive to it twice a day for the next decade.

Where they actually are

They cluster in two places, and neither is on the sea. The nearer group sits inland to the east, around Koropi, twenty minutes from the coast in free flow. The larger group is north, in Kifissia, Halandri, Pallini and Marousi, which from the Riviera is a serious commitment.

• St Lawrence College, Koropi — British curriculum through IGCSE to A-Level. The closest to the Riviera by a distance.
• Geitonas School, Koropi — Greek curriculum with the International Baccalaureate Diploma. Note this is not Costeas-Geitonas, which is a different school in Pallini and roughly twenty kilometres further.
• Verita International, Glyfada and Alimos — English National Curriculum, with Early Years and Primary in Glyfada and Secondary in Alimos. The only English-curriculum provision physically on the coast, and it is split across two municipalities.
• ACS Athens, Halandri — American curriculum and the IB.
• Campion School and Byron College, both Pallini — IGCSE and IB.
• St Catherine's British School, Lykovrissi, and the International School of Athens, Kifissia — the northern cluster, IB continuum at the latter.
• HAEF, Psychiko and Kantza, and Doukas, Marousi — Greek independent schools with international pathways.

The distances, from each address

These are road distances and free-flow times. No Greek authority publishes journey times for these routes, and TomTom measured 143 hours a year lost per Athens driver in 2025, so treat every figure below as the best case and assume term-time mornings are materially worse.

• From Vouliagmeni or Kavouri: St Lawrence 9.5 km, Verita 9.2 to 12.4 km, Geitonas 11.1 km, ACS 28.2 km, the International School of Athens 33.4 km, Campion 33.8 km, St Catherine's about 34 km.
• From Glyfada: St Lawrence 14.0 km, ACS 19.5 km, the International School of Athens 24.2 km.
• From Elliniko: St Lawrence 14.0 km or about 21 minutes, ACS 19.5 km or about 26 minutes, the International School of Athens 24.2 km or about 31 minutes.

Twelve kilometres on this coast is twenty minutes or fifty, and which one it is depends on the hour, the term and nothing you control.

The practical consequence is that the northern schools are not really available to a household living on the Riviera, whatever the map says. Two hours a day in a car, five days a week, is a different life from forty minutes, and families who commit to it before testing it are the ones who move again in year three.

The question that comes before the school

Athens offers the International Baccalaureate, British and American curricula, and Greek independent schools with international pathways. The useful question is not which school is best. It is which university system your children are heading towards in a decade, because switching curriculum mid-secondary is genuinely damaging and it is the mistake families in transition make most often.

Answer that first and the shortlist collapses from a dozen schools to three or four, and the geography problem becomes tractable. Answer it second and you will find yourself choosing between a school that suits the child and a commute that suits nobody.

What changes in September 2027

Costeas-Geitonas has signed a binding long-term lease to build and run a primary and secondary school inside The Ellinikon, opening in September 2027. It is an IB World School across the Primary Years, Middle Years and Diploma programmes.

Two qualifications, because the sales material around this is enthusiastic. It is a Greek school group operating a dual pathway, not a foreign-brand international school — if you are specifically looking for a British or American institution, this is not that. And it is a 2027 opening on a site where the flagship residential building has already slipped about eighteen months. Plan for it, do not bank on it.

When it does open it will be the first serious school physically on this coastline, and it will change the geography described above more than any road project will.

Two things to do before you make an offer

Apply before you buy. The strong international schools run waiting lists and admission cycles that do not accommodate a family arriving in March. Several households have chosen a neighbourhood for a school that then had no place in the relevant year group, and discovered it after completion.

Then drive the route. Eight in the morning, on a Tuesday, in term time, between the address you are considering and the school you are considering. It is the single most useful hour a buyer can spend on this coastline and almost nobody spends it — which is why the four addresses are four genuinely different bets for a family in a way they are not for a couple.

None of this is an argument against the Riviera. It is an argument for doing the school before the house rather than after it, because in this particular market the school is the fixed point and the house is the variable, and almost every family gets that the wrong way round.

Sources

1. St Lawrence College, Koropi — curriculum and location
2. Geitonas School, Koropi — Greek curriculum and IB Diploma
3. Verita International School — Glyfada and Alimos campuses
4. ACS Athens, Halandri
5. Costeas-Geitonas at The Ellinikon, opening September 2027
6. ELSTAT 2021 census, permanent population by settlement
7. TomTom Traffic Index 2025: Athens congestion and hours lost per driver