What are the steps and requirements for obtaining a child ED visa and a Non-O Guardian visa in Thailand?

Please note that if you do the child’s ED visa in-country, you have to wait for their extension before doing the guardian. If you do it outside of Thailand, you can do it together (and extend to 1 year at the same time once in Thailand). I just did mine and entered last week - waiting for the extension and multi-entry stage.

Mine took less than 10 business days to approve abroad.

If you do in-country, you will have to extend your tourist visa.

I did our first 1 year extension last month. This is done after the initial 3 month entrance visa.

We applied for our e-visa from outside of Thailand. The school had to give us quite a few documents. Our school didn’t charge for these documents, but it does take them a week to get them ready. Then it took about a month to get our e-visas approved.

Once in Thailand your child can get the 1 year extension very easily, the school will give you all the documents. You just go into the immigration office 2 weeks before the 3 month visa is over.

For your non- o guardian visa, you’ll need a bank account with at least 500K baht for an entire month including the day you go get your extension visa. They’ll deny the extension if you go under the amount even by 1 baht for 1 day.

Opening a bank account is also a headache, you’ll need a certificate of residence and hope that the bank will accept that. Most banks now only open bank amounts for long term visas or retirement visa only.

We moved here from Spain and they only needed the birth certificate translated into English. But this translation had to be done in Spain by a certified translator registered with the country, and then legalized by the Spanish government. Then we had to take it to the Thai embassy in Madrid to get it legalised by them.

I did both my child’s ED visa and my Guardian visa myself (DIY), without using an agency. In our case, the school was very helpful and provided all the school-related documents needed for the visa. They only charged us 2,000 THB for the documents, and the immigration fee was another 1,900 THB.

The parent mainly needs to take care of the child’s birth certificate and legalization/authentication. If the birth certificate is issued in a foreign language and doesn’t have an English translation, you’ll also need to have it translated into English or Thai as required, then properly legalized/authenticated through the relevant authorities and Thai MFA.

We did an in-country visa change. We submitted everything at immigration and waited for the stamping date, which in our case was around the end of the child’s existing permission to stay. The child should at least have 15 days remaining when you submit the application.

Once the child gets the 90-day ED permission/stamp, you wait until the child gets the 1-year extension, then you can apply for the parent’s Guardian/Non-O visa.

For the Guardian visa, the school again provides the required school documents. The main additional requirement for the parent is the 500,000 THB bank balance.

It was honestly quite easy to do ourselves because the school handled most of the paperwork. 😊 Requirements can vary by immigration office, so I’d still recommend confirming everything with your school/local immigration. Our location is Pattaya.