Rotterdam has three international schools, and where they are tells you most of what you need to know. The two partly state-funded schools, Harbour for primary and RISS for secondary, have three buildings within about 600 metres of each other, west and north of Rotterdam Centraal. The private Nord Anglia school is about 5 km away in Hillegersberg, and the two parts of Rotterdam are very different places to live.
Three schools, four buildings
The schools are the three listed in the city's own guide for internationals. Each address and programme was checked on the school's website in October 2026. For every building we took the neighbourhoods whose centre lies within 2 km in a straight line and added up their official open data for 2025.
| School | District | Residents within 2 km | Households with children | Single-family houses | Average home value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Harbour International School | Delfshaven | 138,900 | 21% | 3% | €371k |
| RISS Junior Campus | Noord | 119,700 | 23% | 4% | €352k |
| RISS Senior Campus | Rotterdam Centrum | 139,600 | 21% | 3% | €369k |
| Nord Anglia International School Rotterdam | Hillegersberg-Schiebroek | 20,000 | 35% | 54% | €629k |
Harbour International School offers English-taught primary education for ages 4 to 11, built on the International Primary Curriculum. Rotterdam International Secondary School teaches grades 6 to 8 on its junior campus and grades 9 to 12 on its senior campus, first IGCSE and then the IB Diploma or the IB Career-related Programme. Nord Anglia International School Rotterdam, formerly the American International School of Rotterdam, takes ages 3 to 18, with the IB Primary Years, Middle Years and Diploma programmes. Admission rules, waiting lists and fees differ, so check them with the school before you shortlist a neighbourhood.
The city schools sit among flats
Around each of the three central buildings live more than 110,000 people, but only 21 to 23 percent of households have children, against 28 percent in Rotterdam as a whole. Fewer than 5 percent of the homes are single-family houses; across the city it is 25 percent. This is a city of flats, with homes averaging €352k to €371k.
Blijdorp, the neighbourhood of the RISS junior campus, lies within about a kilometre of all three buildings and has 17 percent families. Harbour is in Middelland, where 21 percent of households have children. If you want to walk or cycle to school in a few minutes, expect a flat rather than a house.
Hillegersberg is the family side of the map
Around Nord Anglia in Hillegersberg, 35 percent of households have children and 54 percent of homes are houses, at an average of about €629k, the most expensive of the four circles. The school is in Molenlaankwartier, where homes average €726k, and nearby Terbregge reaches 48 percent families.
Two neighbourhoods sit in between. Hillegersberg Zuid is about 2.4 km from the RISS senior campus and 3 km from Nord Anglia, with 31 percent families and homes at about €442k. Zestienhoven, near the airport and about 3 km from the RISS junior campus, has the highest share of families of any large Rotterdam neighbourhood within that distance: 67 percent, at about €779k.
What a distance on the map does and does not tell you
Rotterdam's official neighbourhoods are large. Schiebroek alone has about 17,000 residents, so a 2 km circle catches only a few of them: around Nord Anglia just 3. All distances are in a straight line from the school to the centre of each neighbourhood, and the route by bike can be longer. The figures come from Statistics Netherlands' 2025 key figures and describe everyone who lives there, not only international families.
Use the schools to draw the circle and the neighbourhood figures to choose inside it. You can compare every Rotterdam neighbourhood in the explorer, open the Rotterdam page, browse other cities, read our stories on Amsterdam and Leiden, or see how the figures are built on our data sources page.