Among South East Asian countries, Malaysia has the highest number of children attending English-medium international schools, according to a report published by the International School Consultancy (ISC).

According to the research by ISC, a market intelligence agency on international schools, Malaysia has 71,589 students enrolled in various English-medium international schools.

Malaysia beats Thailand (64,928 students), Indonesia (57,402 students), Vietnam (40,003 students) despite having less than half of the population of these countries.

Malaysia has a population of 30 million while Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam have a population of 67 million, 250 million and 90 million respectively.

Other countries with substantial enrolment of students in such schools include Singapore (63,789 students), Cambodia (26,188 students), Philippines (24,355 students), Myanmar (13,179 students), Brunei (6,255 students) and Laos (3,374 students).

The data was released ahead of the International Private Schools Education Forum (IPSEF) which will take place in Kuala Lumpur from March 22 to 24.

In terms of the number of English-medium international schools, Indonesia tops the list with 190 schools, followed by Thailand at 181 schools and Malaysia at 170 schools.

Other countries with substantial number of English-medium international schools are Cambodia (114 schools), Vietnam (111 schools), Singapore (110 schools), Philippines (61 schools).

Myanmar has 46 such schools followed by Loas with nine and Brunei with eight.

IPSEF co-founder Rhona Greenhill in a statement today said the number of international schools had grown by 39 percent since 2014, from 725 schools to the current 1,008 schools.

"We see a lot of growth potential in this part of the world for private and international schools mainly as a result of the continued growth of the economies in East and Southeast Asia," she said.