Japanese and Korean Schools in Metro Manila

TL;DR: Metro Manila has two national-curriculum schools serving East Asian expatriate communities, and both are in Taguig. Manila Japanese School in Bonifacio Global City is attached to the Embassy of Japan, teaches Japanese elementary Grades 1-6 and junior high Grades 1-3 in Japanese, had 497 students as of 15 April 2026, and takes transfers year-round; it does not publish fees or its eligibility clause publicly, and applying requires a Manila Japanese Association membership card. The Korean International School Philippines at McKinley Hill runs the Korean national curriculum alongside an English curriculum from kindergarten through Grade 12, publishes a full fee schedule (US$700 entrance fee plus roughly PHP 361,000 to PHP 440,000 a year), openly admits non-Korean nationals at a 10 percent tuition surcharge, and requires the child and a parent to hold a Philippine long-stay visa. Most of the primary documentation for both is in Japanese and Korean only; we read it in those languages.

A note on sources and language

Almost nothing useful about these two schools exists in English. The Korean International School Philippines publishes its admissions prospectus as a Korean-language PDF; we downloaded the SY2026 edition, dated 21 October 2025, and read it. Manila Japanese School publishes its admissions pages primarily in Japanese; we read those. The Embassy of Japan's page listing Japanese schools in the country is also in Japanese, last updated 8 November 2023. Everything below comes from those documents, and we flag where a school simply does not publish something.

One practical warning: kisp.ph serves over plain HTTP and its HTTPS certificate does not validate, so some browsers will refuse it. That is a configuration issue, not a sign the school is defunct; the site is actively updated.

Manila Japanese School (マニラ日本人学校)

Location: 36th St., University Parkway, Bonifacio Global City, Taguig City, Metro Manila

Status: Attached to the Embassy of Japan in the Philippines. The Embassy's own page describes a nihonjin gakko as a full-time institution providing education equivalent to Japanese domestic elementary or junior high school under Japanese education law, and states that MJS is the only such school in the Philippines. The only other Japanese educational institution the Embassy lists nationally is Cebu Japanese Supplementary School, which operates Saturdays only for children attending local or international schools who need to maintain their Japanese.

Grade levels: Elementary Grades 1-6 and junior high Grades 1-3, so roughly ages 6 to 15.

Size: 497 students across the whole school as of 15 April 2026, per the school's own enrolment page.

Curriculum and language: Japanese curriculum, taught in Japanese. The programme pages describe Japanese language education aimed at maintaining and improving Japanese ability, English conversation classes taught by native speakers, international and local understanding education, swimming, and career guidance. Classrooms use digital whiteboards and computers, and a special support class is offered, with its own recruitment notice for the 2026 school year.

School year: Japanese, not Philippine. April to March, out of step with both the DepEd calendar and the August-June calendar most international schools here run.

Who may enroll

This is the part MJS does not spell out publicly. Its transfer admissions page and its batch entrance test notice both say applications are open only to households that meet the school's admission conditions, and direct families to read the section on admission eligibility in the MJS Handbook before applying. The Handbook is not posted on the public site.

What is publicly verifiable:

• The online application form requires an image of the applicant's passport and an image of a Japanese Association membership card.
• The Manila Japanese Association (JAMI) states on its own school page that parents of enrolled pupils are required to join the Association.
• The batch entrance test notice makes specific provision for internationally married households, who take a parent interview with the principal in addition to the standard process. That provision only makes sense if such families are eligible.

If your family is not straightforwardly Japanese-passport-holding, the only reliable answer is the one you get in writing from the school's enquiry form.

Admissions timing

MJS states that it accepts transfer students year-round, regardless of whether it is the start of a school year or the start of a term. In practice it also runs scheduled batch tests. Two published examples:

An information session for prospective Grade 1 families was held on 16 February 2026, 14:30-15:15, offered both in person and online, covering admission requirements, fees and admission information.

The test itself: elementary applicants sit written Japanese and Mathematics plus an interview; junior high applicants sit written Japanese, Mathematics and English plus an interview. Results are announced the same day, and the school's office then emails the transfer enrolment procedure.

Fees

Not published. We checked the school's admissions guide, its batch test notice, its 2026 new-enrolment guide and its documents page, in both the Japanese and English versions of the site, and none of them carry a fee table. The February information session agenda listed fees as a topic, and the Handbook is referenced as the place where they live.

Third-party Japanese-language directories quote figures, but a directory is not the school. Request the current schedule through the MJS enquiry form and treat anything else as unconfirmed.

Korean International School Philippines (필리핀한국국제학교, KISP)

Location: 6-A Upper McKinley Road, McKinley Hill Town Center, Fort Bonifacio, Taguig City, Metro Manila 1634

Status: The school's SY2026 prospectus opens with a statement that it is the only Korean school in the Philippines approved by the government of the Republic of Korea under the Act on Educational Support for Overseas Koreans, operating the Korean curriculum and an English curriculum in parallel. Korea's overseas Korean education portal records government establishment approval on 11 July 2005, local establishment approval on 31 May 2004, government operating approval on 13 May 2009, and school opening on 14 September 2009.

Grade levels: An attached kindergarten plus elementary, middle and high school. The prospectus maps international grade levels onto the Korean system as follows: G1-G6 to Korean elementary years 1-6, G7-G9 to middle school years 1-3, G10-G12 to high school years 1-3.

Curriculum and language: Korean national curriculum run alongside an English curriculum. The entrance examination tests Korean language, Mathematics and English, which tells you plainly what the school expects a candidate to be able to do.

Who may enroll

KISP publishes its eligibility rules in full, and they are stricter on visa status than on nationality.

Age and prior schooling

• Kindergarten: born between 1 January 2020 and 31 December 2022 for SY2026, with an interview for the child and parents.
• Grade 1 entry: born between 1 January 2019 and 31 December 2019. Applicants outside that window go to the school's student selection committee.
• Elementary, middle and high school: enrolled at a regular school in the Philippines or Korea as of the application deadline, or temporarily out of school specifically in order to transfer.
• Middle and high school first-year entry: must have completed the preceding school level and not yet completed the level being applied for.

Visa status, applied to every level

The applicant and the father or mother must hold a visa permitting legal long-term stay in the Philippines of one year or more. The prospectus gives employment-related visas, retirement visas, diplomatic visas and investment visas as examples. Applicants who can prove such a visa is in process may apply, but the school states that if the visa is not ultimately issued, admission may be cancelled and handled under the refund rules.

Nationality

Non-Korean nationals are admitted. The fee schedule states that students of foreign nationality are charged an additional 10 percent on tuition. In practice the student body is overwhelmingly Korean, which matters for the language of the playground even where lessons are bilingual.

Admissions calendar

KISP runs two intakes, and this is the clearest published admissions calendar of any school in this article.

Regular intake (정시모집), SY2026

Rolling intake (수시모집)

Applications are accepted during the first semester until one third of SY2026 class days have elapsed, and during the second semester until two thirds of second-semester class days have elapsed. Beyond those points, an application needs the principal's approval. The entrance exam and interview are scheduled individually after the application is filed, results are notified individually, registration must be completed within one week of the notice, and the child must actually start attending within two weeks of it. Miss either and the offer is cancelled.

Capacity and what happens when it fills

Kindergarten has two classes for SY2026, 16 places each: yeolmae-ban for ages 4-5 and saessak-ban for ages 3-4. If applications exceed the class quota, places are drawn by lottery, and the surplus applicants are issued waiting numbers. Elementary through high school run to a per-grade cap of 25. Where a grade is undersubscribed at the regular intake, remaining places are filled through the rolling intake.

That lottery is worth pausing on. Unlike the wait pools at the big Manila international schools, which weigh nationality mix and academic fit, KISP's kindergarten oversubscription is settled by draw. For a family that qualifies, that is arguably fairer and definitely less gameable.

The exam

Missing either the written or the interview component is an automatic fail, candidates must be in the waiting room ten minutes before each component, and cheating means immediate removal and failure.

Fees, SY2026

All figures below are from the school's SY2026 admissions prospectus. Tuition is deliberately split into a US dollar component and a Philippine peso component, paid into two separate accounts, because the school budgets in both currencies.

At roughly PHP 62 to US$1 in August 2026, that lands at about PHP 361,000 (US$5,800) a year for kindergarten and elementary and about PHP 440,000 (US$7,100) a year for middle and high school. The entrance fee is about PHP 43,400 and is charged once: a pupil moving up from kindergarten to elementary, elementary to middle, or middle to high does not pay it again.

Other published charges:

• Screening fee: PHP 5,000 per applicant, for kindergarten and for elementary, middle and high school applicants alike (about US$81).
• Foreign nationality surcharge: an extra 10 percent on tuition.
• Sibling discount, applied per semester: no reduction for the first child, 10 percent off for the second, 20 percent for the third, and 50 percent for the fourth and beyond.
• Remittance surcharges: PHP 150 added if you send pesos from a bank other than BPI, US$5 for dollar transfers from another Philippine bank, and US$15 for dollar transfers from overseas. Intermediary bank fees are the payer's problem.

Against the Manila international school market, this is inexpensive. For comparison, see what the mainstream schools charge in our international school fees guide and our roundup of the leading international schools.

Choosing between a national school and a mainstream international school

The trade is straightforward once you name it.

A national school buys continuity. If your family is returning to Japan or Korea in two or three years, an MJS or KISP education means your child steps back into their home system without a lost year, a curriculum gap or a language regression. Both schools are built around exactly that scenario, and both are considerably cheaper than the international schools they sit near in Taguig.

A mainstream international school buys optionality. An IB, Cambridge or American-diploma track opens universities in a dozen countries. It also costs two to five times as much, and at the older Manila schools your family's priority category may work against you. Our guide to international school admissions timelines and waitlists covers how those priority tiers operate.

Three points that catch families out:

1. The calendars do not line up. MJS runs April to March. KISP runs on the Korean March-to-February pattern reflected in its December application window. Mainstream international schools here run August to June, and DepEd's public system now runs June to April. A mid-move between systems will almost certainly cost or gain part of a year.
2. Immigration is separate from admissions. A place at either school does not settle your child's permit. Foreign children in basic education normally need a Special Study Permit rather than a student visa; see our guides to foreign students in basic education and the Special Study Permit.
3. Neither school is a fallback for the other. If your family qualifies for neither, the international and local private schools around Metro Manila are the realistic field.

Sources

• Embassy of Japan in the Philippines - Overview of Japanese schools and supplementary schools
• Manila Japanese School - official site
• Manila Japanese School - transfer and new enrolment guide
• Manila Japanese School - 2026 second-term batch entrance test notice
• Manila Japanese School - 2026 enrolment guide
• Manila Japanese School - student numbers
• Manila Japanese Association (JAMI) - Manila Japanese School page
• Korean International School Philippines - admissions notices
• Korean International School Philippines - SY2026 admissions prospectus (PDF, Korean)
• Korean Ministry of Education overseas Korean education portal - Korean International School Philippines