Becoming a Student's Pass Holder

A foreigner who has been accepted by an educational institution to pursue full-time study in Singapore will need to apply for a Student's Pass unless he/she has:

• An Immigration Exemption Order, or
• Been granted a Short-Term Visit Pass at a Singapore Checkpoint and wishes to attend a short course*.

*To be exempted from requiring a Student’s Pass, the short course you are taking must:

• Be completed during the validity of the Short-Term Visit Pass or within 30 days, whichever is shorter
• Be a complete and stand-alone module; courses with multiple programme modules are excluded from the Student’s Pass scheme
• Not include hands-on practical occupational training and/or industrial attachment that involves interacting with walk-in customers, or is conducted at premises that are also a place of business (such as a hair or beauty salon).

The requirements and procedures for a Student’s Pass differ slightly depending on the type of educational institution in which you intend to study. For more information on the type of educational institution, please click on the appropriate links below.

• Approved Private Education Institutions
• Foreign System Schools
• Government/Government-Aided/Independent Schools
• Institutes of Technical Education
• Kindergartens and Childcare Centres
• Institutes of Higher Learning

To apply for a Student’s Pass, you must be accepted into an approved full-time course in Singapore. Part-time courses and courses conducted in the evening or on weekends are not eligible.

If you wish to transfer to another school after your application has been approved but have yet to collect the Student’s Pass, you will need to submit a new application.

Foreign born applicants aged 12 years 0 day or below, are required to submit their vaccination information to Health Promotion Board (HPB) w.e.f. 1 Feb 2019. For details, please visit the HPB website.

If you are aged 13 and above (based on year of birth) and your application is approved, you will need to be vaccinated against COVID-19* and achieve minimum protection before you can complete formalities for the pass issuance, unless you are medically exempted and certified by a Singapore doctor. Please refer to Ministry of Health (MOH) website for more details on how to achieve minimum protection.

*Those vaccinated overseas are required to have their overseas vaccination records updated into the National Immunisation Registry (NIR) by a Singapore healthcare provider. Please refer to MOH website for more details on how to do so.