Want to bring your child to New Zealand while you work or study?

A Dependent Child Student Visa lets the dependent child of a work or student visa holder come to New Zealand and go to school here.

It is a student visa, but it does not work like the student visas adults apply for. Your child is not applying on the strength of their own enrolment and their own funds. They are applying on the strength of your visa, your income and your care. That is why most of the requirements on this page are about you rather than about your child.

The visa covers primary and secondary school, which in New Zealand means years 1 to 13. It does not cover tertiary study.

There are two sets of requirements. One set is about you as the parent. The other is about your child.

As the parent, you must:

• be the child’s parent
• have the legal right to take your child out of their home country
• hold an appropriate work or student visa
• meet a minimum income, if you are on certain work visas
• have enough money for your child’s living costs, or have an acceptable sponsor or guarantor
• agree to pay your child’s health care costs if they are not eligible for public health care
• be able to show your child can leave New Zealand at the end of their stay, if you hold a work visa.

Your child must:

• be aged 19 or younger
• be financially dependent on you or your partner
• be in good health
• be of good character
• have a genuine reason for coming to New Zealand
• intend to study at a primary or secondary school.

What INZ means by a dependent child

INZ treats your child as dependent if they rely on you for financial support and they are either 17 or younger, or 18 or 19 with no children of their own.

If your child is 17 or younger, INZ accepts that they rely on you and asks for no evidence of it.

If your child is 18 or 19, INZ may ask you to prove the dependence. The evidence it names is receipts showing you pay their day to day costs such as phone, clothing and food, bank records showing you pay them an allowance, and receipts for larger purchases and travel.

A child who is 18 or 19 and has a child of their own is not a dependent child, whatever support you give them.

For many families, this is the section that determines whether the child qualifies.

If you hold a work visa

Many work visa holders can support a Dependent Child Student Visa. However, some work visa holders—particularly AEWV holders—must meet specific occupation and income requirements.

If you hold an AEWV:

• If you earn at least NZD 52.50 an hour, which is 1.5 times the Skilled Migrant Category median wage, your pay rate can qualify you to support this visa regardless of your occupation’s skill level. You must generally still meet and maintain the minimum annual income threshold of NZD 58,240.
• If your job is at ANZSCO skill level 1, 2 or 3, or is a National Occupation List role recognised for an AEWV, you can support this visa if you earn and maintain at least NZD 58,240 a year.
• If your job is on the Green List and you meet the applicable Green List requirements, your role may qualify you to support your child. You must generally still earn and maintain at least NZD 58,240 a year.
• If your job is an approved care workforce or transport role at ANZSCO skill level 4 or 5, you can support this visa if you earn and maintain at least NZD 58,240 a year and meet INZ’s acceptable employment requirements.
• Some families may continue to use the previous income threshold of NZD 43,322.76 where all of INZ’s 9 March 2025 transitional conditions are met. Broadly, on that date, the child must have held a visa as a dependent child of the AEWV holder or have had an eligible application in progress; the parent must have held an AEWV or Essential Skills Work Visa, or have applied for an AEWV on or before that date that was subsequently granted; and the parent’s applicable maximum continuous stay period must not have been reached.
• A separate transitional rule applies to certain children of AEWV holders in ANZSCO skill-level 4 or 5 roles. The child must have held a visa as the parent’s dependent child on 26 June 2024, or have had an application in progress on that date that was subsequently granted. This rule protects the child’s eligibility; it does not, by itself, activate the NZD 43,322.76 income threshold.

Two further points can make a significant difference.

If you and your partner both hold AEWVs, INZ allows you to combine your incomes to meet the minimum income threshold for dependent children. One parent does not have to meet the threshold alone.

If more than one scenario applies to your job, INZ allows you to use the scenario most favourable to your circumstances. For example, an ANZSCO skill-level 5 job that is also on the Green List can be assessed under the Green List eligibility rules. The applicable annual income threshold must still be met.

Work visas that cannot support this visa

Your child cannot get a Dependent Child Student Visa if you hold one of the following work visas:

• Fishing Crew Work Visa
• Recognised Seasonal Employer Visa
• Supplementary Seasonal Employment Work Visa
• Skilled Migrant Category Job Search Visa
• Working Holiday Visa
• a work visa held as a domestic staff member of diplomatic, consular or official staff
• a seasonal work visa granted under the Specific Purpose Work Visa instructions.

Income makes no difference for these categories. The type of work visa prevents the holder from supporting the child’s application.

If you hold a student visa

You can directly support a Dependent Child Student Visa in three situations. You must:

• be enrolled in a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) programme at a New Zealand university
• hold an eligible Manaaki New Zealand Scholarship, or
• be in New Zealand under a New Zealand Government-approved student exchange scheme.

If you are studying another qualification, including a master’s degree, you generally cannot directly support your child’s application based on your student visa.

However, if your study allows you to support a Partner of a Student Work Visa, your partner may be able to obtain that work visa and then support your child’s Dependent Child Student Visa as a work-visa holder.

Children of diplomatic, consular or official staff

A dependent child of diplomatic, consular or official staff needs approval to study. You must provide a letter from the Protocol Division of New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade confirming that your child has approval.

If the posting ends partway through a school year, the child will need another student visa to finish that school year.

Your child can only stay as long as you can. The visa normally expires on the same date as the supporting parent’s visa.

That is the whole rule, and it has a consequence people miss. If your own visa is renewed, your child’s visa does not follow automatically. It is a separate application each time, and the income and other requirements are assessed again at that point.

The visa starts from the date your child enters New Zealand if they are offshore when it is approved, or from the date it is granted if they are already here.

Your child may be treated as a domestic student, which means you do not pay tuition fees for them to go to school.

This is the real value in the visa. International school fees in New Zealand run into five figures a year, and a child on a visitor visa cannot avoid them for a full school year because a visitor visa only allows three months of study.

Schools may still charge for things that sit outside tuition. Ask the school directly what it charges a domestic student before you budget.

A Dependent Child Student Visa does not cover tertiary study. If your child wants to go to a university, polytechnic or private training establishment, they need a Fee Paying Student Visa instead, with their own enrolment, their own funds and their own fees.

If your child finishes school and does not want to go on to tertiary study, they can keep holding their student visa until it expires. They do not need to switch to a visitor visa.

INZ asks for two different things here, and the second one is where applications get held up.

The relationship

You must prove you are the child’s parent. A birth certificate, adoption papers or other documents confirming the relationship will do it.

If your child is coming to New Zealand for adoption, you need a cover letter explaining that and evidence that the adoption application is before the New Zealand Family Court with Oranga Tamariki’s support, that the Family Court has granted an interim adoption order, or that the adoption is going through an intercountry process under the Hague Convention with Oranga Tamariki’s support and at least one adoptive parent is a New Zealand citizen or resident.

Custody, for a child aged 15 or younger

You must have the legal right to take your child out of their home country.

If you are separated or divorced, INZ wants legal documents showing one of three things: that you have the sole right to decide where your child lives, that you have the right to take your child out of their home country, or that you have custody and the other parent agrees to the move if the application is approved.

If the child’s other parent has died, you provide the death certificate.

Where you have a statutory right to custody and cannot obtain documents to prove it, INZ says it will assess your right to remove the child case by case. That is not a loophole and it is not quick. If this is your situation, it is worth getting advice before you lodge rather than after INZ asks.

INZ wants to see that your child can live here without hardship. There are four ways to satisfy it, and you only need one.

• Your own income. If you hold a work visa and earn enough to support your child, INZ may waive the funds requirement. You show evidence of income, such as a recent payslip.
• Your own funds. NZD 17,000 for a full year of study, or NZD 1,417 for every month your child will be in New Zealand. Proof that the child’s living costs have already been paid also counts.
• A sponsor. A New Zealand citizen, resident or organisation can sponsor your child, using INZ’s Sponsorship Form for Temporary Entry.
• A guarantor. A guarantor completes INZ’s Financial Undertaking for a Student form.

You also have to declare in the application that you or the sponsor will pay for any health care your child needs here. INZ recommends full medical insurance for the length of the stay. Some people are eligible for publicly funded health care, so check whether your child is before you buy a policy.

Citizens of Samoa and Tonga have a specific option where the programme of study lasts 36 weeks or longer. They may meet the funds requirement by providing a written guarantee of maintenance from a relative in New Zealand who is a New Zealand citizen or residence class visa holder.

Your child must be in good health.

For this visa, INZ does not ask every child for a medical examination. What it asks for depends on how long your child is staying and where they have been.

• Staying less than six months: no chest X-ray needed, as a rule.
• Staying less than twelve months: no medical certificate needed, as a rule.
• Staying more than six months: a chest X-ray is required if your child is a citizen of a country that does not have a low incidence of tuberculosis, or has spent more than three months in the last five years in such a country.

Your child needs a fresh chest X-ray certificate, even if they have given INZ one before, if they have since spent six months in a row in a country without a low incidence of TB and are now coming here for more than six months. Time already spent in New Zealand counts towards that.

You answer health questions in the application and those answers decide whether evidence is needed. INZ can still ask for a chest X-ray or a medical examination while it processes the application, even if neither was required when you lodged it. Any evidence must be less than three months old when INZ receives it.

Your child may need to provide police certificates.

Police certificates are required if your child is aged 17 or older and their total time in New Zealand will be 24 months or longer, counting time already spent here on other visas.

Where they are required, they must come from every country your child is a citizen of, and every country they have spent more than five years in since they turned 17. They must be less than six months old when you apply.

You do not need to provide them again if you supplied them with an earlier application and they were issued in the last 24 months. INZ can ask for a new one at any point while the application is open.

A criminal conviction or a security concern can mean no visa.

Yes, in the last two years of school, and within limits.

A student in year 12 or 13 can work up to 25 hours a week during the school year, and full-time over the Christmas and New Year holidays between school years, if they are studying full-time and have written permission from both the school and a parent or legal guardian. Students aged 18 or older do not need permission to work over the summer holidays.

Three limits matter. A student under 16 cannot work. The work must be employment under an employment agreement, not self-employment or contracting. If your child is still enrolled full-time in year 12 or 13 and otherwise meets the requirements, they may be able to apply for work rights through a variation of conditions. Once they have finished school, they cannot gain work rights if their visa did not already include them.

If the visa does include part-time work rights, your child can keep working after they finish school until the visa expires.

Anyone working in New Zealand pays tax and needs an IRD number from Inland Revenue.

INZ’s published fee for a Dependent Child Student Visa starts at NZD 750. Processing is 80 percent of applications decided within 9.5 weeks.

Both move. Check the current figure on INZ’s fees and processing times page before you budget or book travel, and remember 9.5 weeks is the figure for 80 percent of applications, not a guarantee for yours.

You can apply for your child’s visa at the same time as your own. If your child is already in New Zealand and their current visa will expire while the application is being decided, INZ will normally grant an interim visa so they stay here lawfully.

Five patterns come up again and again.

The parent’s income is assessed on the wrong rule. A family checks the hourly figure, finds they are under it, and assumes the answer is no. The annual threshold, the Green List route and the combined income rule for two AEWV holders all exist, and INZ applies whichever scenario is most favourable.

A parent on a student visa assumes a master’s degree counts. Only a PhD, a Manaaki scholarship or an approved exchange scheme supports this visa.

The child is put on a visitor visa to start the school year. A visitor visa allows three months of study, so it cannot cover a school year, and a school-aged child cannot study in term one if they already used their three months in term four of the previous year.

Custody documents are left to the end. For a child 15 or younger with separated parents, these take longer to obtain than anything else in the application, and INZ will not decide without them.

The child’s visa is allowed to lapse when the parent’s visa is renewed. The two visas expire together but they do not renew together.

How much is a dependent child visa in New Zealand?

INZ’s fee starts at NZD 750 as at October 2026. On top of the application fee, budget for anything INZ asks for as evidence, such as a chest X-ray, a medical examination, police certificates or certified translations. Those are charged by the providers, not by INZ.

Can you bring dependents on a student visa in New Zealand?

Directly, only in three situations. If you are enrolled in a PhD at a New Zealand university, hold an eligible Manaaki New Zealand Scholarship, or are here under a New Zealand Government-approved student exchange scheme, you can directly support your child for a Dependent Child Student Visa.

If you are studying another qualification, including a master’s degree, you generally cannot directly support the child based on your student visa. However, if your study allows you to support a Partner of a Student Work Visa, your partner may be able to obtain that visa and then support your child as a work-visa holder.

What is the age limit for a dependent child visa?

Your child must be 19 or younger. INZ treats them as dependent if they are 17 or younger, or 18 or 19 with no children of their own. A child of 18 or 19 may be asked to prove they rely on you financially.

How do you apply for a dependent child visa in New Zealand?

You apply online through INZ, and you can lodge your child’s application at the same time as your own. You will need your child’s passport, an acceptable photo, evidence of your relationship and their dependence, custody documents where they apply, proof of funds, proof your child can leave New Zealand at the end of the stay, and a chest X-ray, medical examination or police certificates where those are required.

Does my child pay international school fees?

No. A child on this visa may be treated as a domestic student, so there are no international tuition fees for primary or secondary school. Schools can still charge for costs that sit outside tuition, so ask the school what it charges a domestic student.

Can my child stay if they finish school before my visa expires?

Yes. They can keep holding the student visa until it expires and do not need to move to a visitor visa. If the visa carries part-time work rights, they can keep working on it.

My child is four. Can they come on this visa?

Possibly not yet. Children cannot go to school in New Zealand before they turn five, so if you apply six months or more before your child starts school, INZ may grant a visitor visa instead of this one.

Can my child change schools?

Changing to a different education provider will normally require a new student visa. However, a variation of conditions may be possible where the change is for reasons beyond the student’s control—for example, if the education provider closes or the change results from compliance action taken by NZQA.

Can both parents’ incomes count?

If you both hold an AEWV, yes. INZ allows two AEWV holders to combine incomes to meet the minimum income threshold for dependent children.