TL;DR: A 9(g) pre-arranged employment visa covers your family: BI recognizes your spouse and unmarried children under 21 as dependents, with visa validity tracking yours (1-3 years, principal fees ₱10,130-25,710 plus ACR I-Card US$50-150). BI's student rules exempt 9(g) dependents' tertiary enrolment from the Special Study Permit; for K-12 the exemption wording is narrower, so most families either get BI's written confirmation or budget about US$140 for an SSP per child. School choice comes down to assignment length: international schools for continuity on a 2-3 year posting, local private schools for the long haul. Your employer handles the visa; the school handles student permits; you coordinate the two.
The 9(g) is the workhorse visa for foreigners employed in the Philippines — and unlike a tourist stay, it comes with a real framework for bringing your family. Here is how the dependent rules work, what the study-permit rules actually say, and how to make the school decision on an expat timeline.
How 9(g) Dependent Status Works
The Bureau of Immigration describes 9(g) applicants as "foreign nationals who are proceeding to Philippines to engage in any lawful occupation, whether for wages or salary or other forms of compensation." The dependent provision covers "the spouse and dependent children under the age of 21 years and unmarried" of the principal.
The practical mechanics:
- Dependents file their own paperwork — passport, proof of relationship (marriage and birth certificates), and the BI checklist forms — usually assembled by the employer's immigration provider alongside the principal's petition.
- Validity tracks the principal. Commercial 9(g) visas come in 1, 2, or 3-year terms; BI's published principal fees run from about ₱10,130 to ₱25,710 (roughly US$180-450) depending on duration, and its fee tables carry separate dependent-spouse and under-16/under-14 dependent categories. Each family member also needs an ACR I-Card (US$50-150 depending on validity).
- Dependent status is not work authorization. A trailing spouse who wants a job needs their own employer-sponsored visa.
- When the job ends, so does the status — yours and theirs. More on that below, because it is the part that catches families mid-school-year.
Fee schedules on BI's site carry old "as of" dates; treat the numbers as indicative and verify current rates through your employer's provider. Most multinationals' mobility packages absorb these fees for the whole family — worth confirming in the offer negotiation rather than after arrival, along with whether the package covers school fees, which are the far larger number.
The Special Study Permit Question
Whether your kids need a Special Study Permit (SSP) is the question schools will raise first, and the rules are more specific than most relocation briefings admit.
BI Memorandum Circular No. SBM-2015-007, Article IV, Section 1, exempts from securing a Student Visa or SSP the tertiary enrolment of the spouses and unmarried dependent children below 21 of "foreign nationals with valid working visas under Sections 9(d), 9(g) and 47(a)(2)." The privilege extends to principals too — a 9(g) worker can enroll in a degree program without switching to a student visa.
So for a dependent starting college, the exemption is explicit. For a dependent entering preschool, elementary, or high school, note two things the circular actually says:
- The exemption clause is written around tertiary enrolment, with no equivalent wording for basic education.
- Elsewhere, the circular provides that foreign students enrolled in elementary and secondary courses are issued an SSP on a yearly basis — though the SSP itself is defined as a permit issued "in conjunction with" a temporary visitor's visa, which a 9(g) dependent does not hold. The two provisions do not line up cleanly for working-visa dependents in K-12, and BI resolves that kind of gap case by case.
The house advice, same as we give every foreign family enrolling in basic education: have the school's authorized liaison put your child's exact status and grade level to BI's Student Visa Section in writing, and keep the reply. If an SSP is required, the published cost is ₱5,240 plus US$50 for the I-Card (about US$140 per child), renewed yearly for school-age kids — an annoyance, not a crisis. What you do not want is to discover the question at enrollment week, because the stakes are published and asymmetric. The circular bars enrollment in both directions — no school shall accept a foreign national without a validly issued Student Visa or SSP, and no foreign national shall commence study without one — and its sanctions section puts numbers on it: a school found in violation faces cancellation or revocation of its authority to accept foreign students and/or a ₱50,000 fine, while "any foreign student found to have enrolled without appropriate Student Visa or SSP shall be charged a fine of Twenty Thousand Pesos (Php 20,000.00) and subsequent deportation." No school registrar will run that risk for your convenience, which is why the written-confirmation route is worth the two weeks it takes.
If an SSP Is Required: How It Actually Runs
The mechanics are less painful than the acronyms suggest, and they run through the school, not through you standing in line at Intramuros:
- The school issues a Certificate of Acceptance / Notice of Admission.
- The school's authorized representative — a regular employee accredited with BI — files the SSP application with the Student Visa Section or the BI sub-port office covering the school. BI processes only applications filed through that representative, and its published target is five working days for SSPs.
- You pay the published fees (₱5,240 plus US$50 for the I-Card) and the child does biometrics.
- For elementary and secondary students, the permit is issued on a yearly basis, so this becomes an annual back-to-school task alongside re-enrollment. Put it in the same calendar reminder as your 9(g) renewal.
One structural oddity worth knowing: the SSP is defined in the circular as riding on a temporary visitor's visa, and its continued validity is conditioned on the holder keeping that visitor status current. A 9(g) dependent holds dependent status instead, which is precisely why BI's answer for your specific child is worth having in writing rather than inferred from a blog post — including this one.
International vs Local School: Decide on the Timeline
The 9(g) family's school decision is really a question about the assignment:
Choose an international school when the posting is finite. If you will be in Manila or Cebu for two or three years and then move on, curriculum continuity is worth paying for: IB, American, or British programs that the next country's schools will recognize, an August-June calendar aligned with most of the world, and admissions offices that enroll mid-career expat kids every semester. Expect annual fees from several hundred thousand pesos to ₱1 million+ (roughly US$5,000-18,000+) at the established names. See the best international schools in the Philippines for names and per-school fee ranges.
Choose a local private school when the move looks permanent. DepEd's K-12 curriculum, mostly English-medium instruction in the upper grades, and tuition around ₱50,000-250,000 a year (US$900-4,400) — a fraction of international-school fees. The trade-off is a Philippine curriculum and calendar that complicate a later move abroad. The private vs public comparison covers what your child would be stepping into.
Calendar friction is real. DepEd schools run roughly June/July to March/April; international schools run August to May/June. A January arrival lands mid-year for both systems — ask shortlisted schools about mid-year admission before you commit to a start date.
Employer, School, Family: Who Does What
Enrollment for a 9(g) family is a three-way coordination problem, and it goes smoothest when everyone stays in their lane:
- Employer / mobility provider: the 9(g) petition, dependent visas, ACR I-Cards, and renewals. Ask HR for copies of every family member's visa implementation page and I-Card — schools photocopy these.
- School: admissions, records evaluation, and the BI student-side paperwork. Schools accredited to accept foreign students have an authorized representative who files SSP applications; BI processes only applications filed through that representative.
- You: the calendar. Renewals, the SSP question, and school deadlines run on different clocks and nobody else is watching all three.
One coordination tip that saves real pain: get the dependent visas processed with the principal's petition, not "once we're settled." A child whose status is still in process at enrollment time creates exactly the ambiguity schools escalate to BI.
What the First 90 Days Should Look Like
Families who land smoothly tend to run roughly this sequence, starting before the flight:
- 8-12 weeks out: employer files the 9(g) petition with dependents included; you shortlist schools and ask each registrar two questions in writing — what documents they need for a 9(g) dependent, and whether they will require an SSP for the grade level.
- 4-8 weeks out: gather apostilled birth and marriage certificates, complete school records with English translations, and immunization records. Schools evaluate transferees against the K-12 ladder using exactly these papers, and re-requesting documents from your home country after you have left is the single most common delay.
- Arrival: ACR I-Card biometrics for every family member. Keep photocopies of each passport bio page, visa implementation page, and I-Card in one folder; every institution you meet for the next year will ask for the same set.
- Before the first tuition payment: confirm the school's BI accreditation to accept foreign students, and settle the SSP question in writing. Then enroll.
The visa-side money is modest next to tuition. Budget roughly ₱8,000-9,000 per dependent in BI dependent-visa fees (using BI's published under-14/under-16/spouse tiers as the guide), US$50-150 per person for I-Cards, and about US$140 per child per year for an SSP if one is required — call it US$500-700 per child in year one, against school fees that run from ₱50,000 to over ₱1 million a year depending on the lane you choose.
When the Job Ends
The 9(g) is employer-specific. Resign, get restructured, or finish the contract, and BI expects the visa to be downgraded — dependents included. For a family, that means a job change is also a school-continuity event:
- Changing employers means a fresh 9(g) petition through the new employer, with the family's status tracking that process. Time it against the school year where you can.
- Leaving the country mid-year is mostly a records problem: get complete transcripts and, for local schools, ask about DepEd transfer credentials before your visa status winds down.
- Staying long-term? Families who fall for the Philippines often switch tracks entirely — marriage-based 13(a) status if one spouse is Filipino, or the deposit-based SRRV from age 40 — both of which decouple the family's residency (and the kids' schooling) from any employer.
