TL;DR — Starland admission is a form-first process, not an exam-first one. You submit an online enrolment form, the registrar contacts you, the cashier emails a fee assessment, you pay, you get a certificate of registration. The online assessment for preschool to Grade 10 is explicitly for profiling and not an admission filter. The only fee figures published are the confirmation payment — 5,000 pesos at Cagayan de Oro — and an 8,000-peso study permit processing fee for foreign learners.
Contacts and the address are on the Starland International School profile, other schools in the city are on the Cagayan de Oro schools page, and our best private schools in Cagayan de Oro round-up compares the local field.
The five steps, in order
Starland publishes the sequence clearly, which is more than most schools do.
- Submit the online enrolment application form. Starland points families at a QR code and at its enrolment portal. There is no paper-first route advertised.
- The registrar contacts you. This is where document submission is arranged and, for preschool to Grade 10, where the assessment schedule is set based on what you entered on the form.
- The cashier sends a school fees assessment. It arrives by email and, for Philippine numbers, by SMS, together with a link for online payment.
- Pay. Three channels: the online link, over the counter at a branch, or a bank deposit to Starland's EastWest, BPI, BDO or UnionBank accounts.
- Receive your certificate of registration from the registrar. That is the proof the enrolment is complete.
The order matters. You do not find out what the school costs until step three, after you have already filled in a form and been contacted. If you want a figure earlier, call the Cagayan de Oro branch on (088) 880 3525 and ask for the assessment before starting the online form.
The assessment, and what it is not
Starland runs a free online assessment over Google Meet. It is required for preschool through Grade 10 and not required for Grades 11 and 12.
The school states plainly that the assessment is for student profiling only and is not the basis for admission. That is worth taking at face value and worth understanding correctly:
- It is not a competitive entrance exam. There is no cut-off, no pass mark, and no published quota.
- It is a placement and readiness check, used to work out where a child sits and what support they need. Starland pairs this with its stated inclusive-learning support for diverse learning needs and with small class sizes, and profiling is how those get applied.
So there is nothing to cram for, and there is something to be honest about. If a child has a diagnosed learning difference or has been struggling in a specific area, the assessment is the right moment to say so rather than the moment to coach them through. That is the difference between the school preparing for your child and the school discovering the situation in October.
Note also that Grades 11 and 12 skip the assessment entirely. Senior high entry at Starland is document-based.
What to prepare
Local learners:
- NSO or PSA-certified birth certificate copy
- Previous year's report card, Form 138
- Certificate of good moral character
- Three 1x1 photos and one 2x2 photo
- Health certificate, where applicable
- Recommendation letter for high school transfers
Foreign learners, everything above plus:
- Passport copies covering the photo page, date of birth, passport number and validity dates
- Visa documentation showing length of stay
- Special Study Permit processing fee: PHP 8,000
- Guardian affidavit and supporting documents where the child is not with a parent
- Translated and authenticated transcript of records, Form 137
- Three passport-sized photos
- Health certificate
The Special Study Permit is the item foreign families most often underestimate, because it is a separate government requirement with its own timeline rather than a school formality. Our guide to the student visa versus special study permit explains which document your child actually needs at which age. The 8,000 pesos Starland lists is a processing fee, so ask whether government charges are included in it or billed separately.
Modalities, which change everything about the cost
Starland offers four delivery modes: face to face, online distance learning, blended learning and homeschooling, with class size caps varying between 10 and 30 learners depending on level and modality.
That is unusual breadth for a provincial private school and it is the single biggest variable in your bill, because Starland states that fees vary by grade level, campus and learning modality. Online distance learning is grouped with the higher confirmation-payment bracket alongside Kamias, Caloocan, Cebu and foreign learners, while the Cagayan de Oro campus sits in the lower bracket. Ask for assessments for both the modality you want and the one you are considering as a fallback, because they will not be the same number.
The money, and the gap in it
Published figures:
| Item | Published amount |
|---|---|
| Confirmation payment, Butuan, Cagayan de Oro, Davao | PHP 5,000 |
| Confirmation payment, Kamias, Caloocan, Cebu, ODL, foreign learners | PHP 7,000 |
| Special Study Permit processing, foreign learners | PHP 8,000 |
| Reservation fee | None required |
Tuition itself is not published. No range, no per-level table, nothing. The confirmation payment is not a deposit against an unknown — it is the amount that secures the slot, and the rest arrives in the cashier's assessment.
Payment terms are monthly, quarterly, semi-annual or annual. If you are comparing Starland with another school, compare the annual figures, not the monthly ones, because the number of monthly instalments differs between schools and a lower monthly payment across more months is not a discount.
Starland also lists discount categories, including sibling, residency, privilege discounts for persons with disability, indigenous peoples, solo parents and uniformed personnel, alumni legacy discounts, the senior high voucher and, at some campuses, PEAC subsidy for Grade 7. Note that the discount promotion set out on its admission page ran to 31 January 2026, so ask which discounts are currently live rather than assuming the published list still applies. The DepEd voucher and PEAC ESC routes are national and do not depend on a school promotion, so ask about those separately.
Timing
Starland states that School Year 2026-2027 opens on Wednesday, 22 July 2026, starting with learner orientation and diagnostic testing. Work backwards from that: documents gathered and the assessment done well before July, and the Special Study Permit started months earlier if you are a foreign family. Our DepEd school calendar guide covers how the national calendar sits around that date.
Class sizes, and reading the caps properly
Starland publishes class size caps ranging from 10 to 30 learners depending on level and modality. That is a wide band, and it is the number that most affects what a school day is actually like.
A cap is a ceiling, not a promise. Two schools can both publish a cap of 30 and run classes of 18 and 30 respectively. When you call, ask for the actual current headcount in your child's specific level, section and modality, not the cap. If a school will not give you that figure, treat the omission as information.
Small classes are the standard argument for a school like this over a large one, and they are worth paying for if they are real. They are worth nothing if the cap is the number you are quoted and the room is the number you get.
What "international school" means here
Starland is a Philippine school with campuses it names as Kamias, Caloocan, Cebu, Davao, Butuan and Cagayan de Oro, running the DepEd curriculum with Filipino senior high strands — GAS, STEM, HUMSS, ABM and a tech-voc ICT strand. It admits foreign learners and handles the study permit paperwork, which is a genuine service, but "international" in the name here signals that the school takes foreign students, not that it teaches an international curriculum like IB or Cambridge.
That is not a criticism. It is the most common meaning of the word in Philippine school names, and for a Filipino family it is usually what you want, since a DepEd curriculum keeps the local university route open. It matters if you are an expatriate family expecting a curriculum that transfers back home. Our local versus international school guide for expat kids covers what to check, and our international school fees guide shows the price gap between the two meanings of the word.
What to ask the Cagayan de Oro branch
- Which grade levels are actually running at Patag this year, and which senior high strands.
- The full annual assessment for your level and modality, tuition and other fees separately.
- Which discounts are currently live and whether they combine.
- The class size cap for your child's specific level and modality.
- For foreign families, what the 8,000-peso permit fee does and does not cover.
Sources
- Starland International School, Admission (steps, requirements, assessment policy, confirmation payments, SSP fee, modalities, discounts, school year opening) — https://starland.edu.ph/admission/
- Starland International School homepage (levels, modalities, class sizes) — https://starland.edu.ph/
- Starland International School, enrolment portal — https://enrollment.starland.edu.ph/
