# What a Status Is Worth Beyond Entry: Tuition, Admission and a Child's Citizenship

> The word "resident" covers three different tests — qualification, nationality and residence. How each changes the tuition rate, the admission pool, access to grants and the speed of a child's citizenship, with Article 11 of Directive 2003/109/EC and a country-by-country comparison of the child's clock against the parent's.

Author: Dana Berzeg — Attorney-at-law, Family Office (https://wiki.private.law/en/authors/berzegova)
Last modified: 2026-09-09T00:00:00.000Z
Canonical: https://wiki.private.law/en/residence-education-rights
Publisher: wiki.private.law (https://wiki.private.law)
Version: 94a6a8bd79cfd1d3a8bfe13b6a825d65ec1a32fe1490cc84b221fd92f2b22f49
Cite as: What a Status Is Worth Beyond Entry: Tuition, Admission and a Child's Citizenship. wiki.private.law. https://wiki.private.law/en/residence-education-rights. Version 94a6a8bd79cfd1d3a8bfe13b6a825d65ec1a32fe1490cc84b221fd92f2b22f49.
Topics: migration
Jurisdictions: eu, uk, germany, france, spain, portugal, italy, netherlands, brazil, usa
Product tags: residence-permit, permanent-residence, citizenship, relocation
Semantic tags: residence-permit, permanent-residence, citizenship, relocation

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## Concept

A residence permit is sold and compared as a right to enter and stay. For a family with children a large part of its value sits elsewhere: in what the status does to the price of a university place, to the odds of winning one, and to how fast a child becomes a citizen of a country the parents merely live in. None of that appears in a programme's fee schedule, and none of it follows automatically from holding the card. The [map of the migration domain](https://wiki.private.law/en/migration-hub) treats the family as the third step of every route; this page owns what the status is worth once the family has arrived.

It does not follow automatically because the word "resident" covers three different tests. Three keys govern the questions a family actually asks, and each runs on its own clock.

1. The qualification — where the school-leaving certificate was issued, irrespective of nationality or residence.
2. Nationality — a closed list of citizenships, irrespective of where the holder lives.
3. Residence — lawful presence of a stated kind and duration.
The third key varies most, because each state sets its own hardness. Italy accepts an ordinary permit. England accepts only settlement, which is residence that has hardened into a permanent status, and Scotland substitutes domicile for it. Grants and loans then run the same three keys on longer clocks than tuition does. The practical question is therefore which test a country applies and how strict its version is, and the answer changes the price by a factor of six.

### Where each key operates

Italy runs the residence key at its most generous. Under article 39(5) of Legislative Decree 286/1998 a non-EU national holding a qualifying permit — long-term residence, subordinate or autonomous work, family reunification, asylum — accesses Italian universities "on equal terms with Italian students", and the Ministry's annual enrolment circular places those categories outside the reserved quota and outside the study-visa route.

The Netherlands leans on nationality. Article 7.45a of the WHW grants the statutory tuition rate to the groups named in article 2.2 of the Wet studiefinanciering 2000 and, expressly, to holders of Surinamese nationality wherever they live; that article also admits residence-based categories set by decree, so the Dutch rule mixes nationality with residence. Germany and Spain apply the qualification key at the admission stage: a foreign national holding a German Abitur applies as a German, while a Spanish national schooled abroad goes through the foreign-qualification route.

A family can therefore hold an impeccable permit and still sit outside the key that governs the outcome it wants. The choice of school system feeds the same decision, which is why the [international school](https://wiki.private.law/en/international-schools) is chosen together with the jurisdiction. The parameters below fix the frame; the sections that follow work through each key in turn.

### Key parameters

| Parameter | Position |
| --- | --- |
| Governing norms | Directive 2003/109/EC art. 11; national fee, admission and nationality statutes |
| Who is caught | third-country nationals lawfully resident, on terms set by each state |
| EU qualifying period | five years of legal and continuous residence, art. 4 |
| What residence decides where it is the operative key | tuition rate, admission pool, grants and loans, a child's route to citizenship |
| Price gap, England 2026/27 | £9 790 home cap against £17 000 – £62 820 charged to overseas students |
| Child against parent | one year against ten in Spain; residence to majority in Italy |
| Current texts | art. 11 of Directive 2003/109/EC in the 2011 consolidated text; the English fee cap and the Portuguese nationality law in their 2026 versions |

## What EU law actually guarantees

The legal backbone for a third-country national is article 11 of [Directive 2003/109/EC](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A02003L0109-20110520). Its opening line is generous — long-term residents "shall enjoy equal treatment with nationals" — and point (b) covers "education and vocational training, including study grants in accordance with national law". That closing phrase is a renvoi: the directive hands the study-grant question back to the Member State that it appeared to answer.

### The options states may exercise

Two further provisions narrow the guarantee, and both are permissive. Article 11(2) lets a state confine equal treatment in education to cases where the registered or usual residence of the resident, or of the family member claiming the benefit, lies within its territory. Article 11(3)(b) lets it require "proof of appropriate language proficiency for access to education and training" and make university access conditional on specific educational prerequisites. States use both.

Timing carries as much weight as content. Article 4(1) grants long-term resident status after five years of legal and continuous residence, so the equal-treatment right becomes available in the sixth year of a family's stay — commonly after the eldest child has already applied to university. How those five years are counted, and what breaks them, belongs to the [life cycle of a migration status](https://wiki.private.law/en/migration-status-lifecycle). Article 14 then adds a right to reside in a second Member State for more than three months, with study expressly listed as a ground.

### Where the family holds EU citizenship

The governing instrument is [Directive 2004/38/EC](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A02004L0038-20110616), whose article 24(2) repeats the same retreat in blunter form: before permanent residence is acquired the host state need not grant "maintenance aid for studies … consisting in student grants or student loans" to anyone other than workers, the self-employed and their families. In [Commission v Netherlands](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A62014CJ0233) (C-233/14, 2 June 2016) the Court read that derogation broadly and dismissed the action, holding that a discounted student travel card "has the characteristics of and is akin to a student grant or a loan" and that the benefit being granted in kind was "irrelevant".

> ⚙️ The case law splits along categories of claimant. In [Förster](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A62007CJ0158) (C-158/07) the Court upheld a five-year prior-residence requirement applied to an economically inactive student. In [Giersch](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A62012CJ0020) (C-20/12) it struck down a bare residence condition, of no fixed duration, imposed on the child of a frontier worker, because the condition precluded other evidence of attachment. Both remain good law; which one applies turns on whether anyone in the family is economically active.

## Price: England as the hardest version of the residence key

England prices tuition by immigration category, and the category it requires is settlement, which a permit alone does not supply. Schedule 1 to the [Education (Fees and Awards) (England) Regulations 2007](https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2007/779/schedule/1) gives the home rate to a person "settled in the United Kingdom" — indefinite leave to remain or the right of abode — who is ordinarily resident on the first day of the course and has been ordinarily resident in the United Kingdom and Islands "throughout the three-year period preceding" it. A further limb excludes residence that was "wholly or mainly for the purpose of receiving full-time education".

A Skilled Worker's dependant who has lived in London for six years therefore holds a lawful permit, pays local tax and is charged as an overseas student. The following rates apply to the same course on the same campus.

| Category | Rate, 2026/27 | Source |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Home cap, full-time | £9 790 | fee-limit regulations |
| Overseas, lower end | £17 000 | Teesside University |
| Overseas, Oxford band | £37 380 – £62 820 | University of Oxford, 2026 entry |
| Overseas, clinical medicine | £58 600 | Imperial College, MBBS/BSc |

The four rows differ only in the immigration category of the student. Two routes escape the settlement requirement. Protection categories — refugees, humanitarian protection, the Ukraine and Afghan schemes — receive the home rate on day one of ordinary residence, with no three-year period at all. Paragraph 13 gives it on long residence: under 18 and resident throughout the preceding seven years, or 18 and over and resident for half a life or twenty years. That second route is what serves children who grew up in the country while the family's status stayed limited, so a lengthening settlement clock changes an education budget years before it changes anything else — which is why the [reform of British settlement](https://wiki.private.law/en/uk-earned-settlement) belongs in this calculation.

Scotland shows what a differently anchored residence test does to the same person. A Scottish-domiciled undergraduate is capped at £1 820 for 2026/27, while a student from the rest of the United Kingdom at a Scottish institution pays up to £9 790. The immigration status is identical and the difference is fivefold, decided by domicile.

## Odds, and the money that pays the fee

Where a country declines to charge foreign students more, it often admits them separately, and for a particular child the admission rule can weigh more than the price.

### Admission pools

Italy operates a *contingente riservato*, a set of places reserved per course for visa-requiring international applicants who compete only against each other, and article 39(5) is the door out of it. Germany reserves a quota for applicants not equated with Germans: 11 per cent of restricted-admission places in Brandenburg, and in North Rhine-Westphalia 5 per cent of the centrally allocated places in medicine, dentistry, pharmacy and veterinary science together with 7 per cent of locally restricted courses. Spain sets no quota for foreign applicants; it routes holders of foreign qualifications through an accreditation procedure in place of the domestic examination. A quota fixes how many places a candidate can compete for at all, which no amount of fee-paying alters.

### Grants and loans

The money runs on the residence key again, on a longer clock, and the rules differ by the kind of support sought. In Spain the rule is clean: article 9 of [Organic Law 4/2000](https://www.boe.es/buscar/act.php?id=BOE-A-2000-544) gives foreign residents over eighteen access to the public grant system "on the same terms as Spaniards", keyed to residence alone. In Germany [section 8 of the BAföG](https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/baf_g/__8.html) lists the qualifying residence titles; some carry no waiting period, others require fifteen months of lawful residence, and a study permit under section 16b of the Residence Act is absent from the list.

England splits the two tests by kind of support. A person with pre-settled status counts three years across the United Kingdom, the EEA, Switzerland and the overseas territories for both home fee status and the tuition fee loan, under paragraph 9A of Schedule 1 to the [Education (Student Support) Regulations 2011](https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2011/1986/schedule/1) and the identically worded paragraph in the fees regulations. The maintenance loan and grants require the narrower route, three years in the United Kingdom and the Islands, which regulation 2 defines as the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. Families meet the consequence late: the fee is financed and living costs are not.

> 💡 Madrid puts a figure on the same divide. Under [decree 43/2022 of 29 June](https://www.bocm.es/boletin/CM_Orden_BOCM/2022/07/01/BOCM-20220701-1.PDF) (BOCM No 155 of 1 July 2022) the region's public universities charge foreign students over eighteen who are neither residents nor EU nationals at the fourth-enrolment rate: in the top undergraduate price band, €136.44 per credit against €20.68 at first enrolment. Article 8 states expressly that a student stay authorisation "shall not be equivalent to resident status".

## The child's clock

A parent's permit converts into a child's citizenship on a timetable of its own, and families underuse it because they assume it tracks the parent's naturalisation. It does not, and its direction is not constant: three recent reforms moved it in opposite ways. The maps of unconditional and conditional jus soli, and the tax consequences of a birth abroad, are owned by [birthright citizenship](https://wiki.private.law/en/birthright-citizenship-countries); this page takes those rules only as the child's half of a comparison against the parent's clock. The parent's column below is quoted for that comparison, while naturalisation periods and their reforms belong to [paths to EU citizenship](https://wiki.private.law/en/eu-citizenship-routes).

| Country | Child born in the country | Parent's naturalisation |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Spain | one year of legal residence, art. 22.2(a) | ten years, art. 22.1 |
| France | at 18, or by declaration from 13 | five years |
| Germany | at birth, once a parent qualifies | five years |
| Portugal | parent resident five years at the birth | seven or ten years |
| Italy | unbroken residence to majority | ten years |

Two of those rows run ten to one in the child's favour and two run against the child, which is the practical reason the comparison has to be made country by country.

### Spain and France, where the child runs ahead

A child born in Spanish territory to foreign parents may be naturalised after one year of residence that is "legal, continuous and immediately prior to the application" under [article 22.2(a) of the Civil Code](https://www.boe.es/buscar/act.php?id=BOE-A-1889-4763), the application being made by the legal representative while the child is a minor. The parent's own period is ten years, falling to two where the parent is Ibero-American, Andorran, Filipino, Equatoguinean, Portuguese or Sephardic.

France asks almost nothing of the parents. Article 21-7 of the Civil Code gives nationality at majority to a child born in France to foreign parents who is resident there at 18 and has had habitual residence for five years since the age of eleven; article 21-11 lets the child claim it by declaration from sixteen, or the parents claim it on the child's behalf from thirteen with the child's consent, the residence then counting from age eight. Neither article requires the parents to hold a title. The exception is territorial: for a child born in Mayotte, article 2493 of the Civil Code as amended by the law of 12 May 2025 requires both parents to have held a residence permit continuously for more than a year at the date of birth.

### Germany, Portugal and Italy, where the parent's clock runs first

Germany gives the child the earlier outcome but gates it on the parent's own accumulated years. Under [section 4(3) of the Nationality Act](https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stag/__4.html) the child acquires German nationality at birth, but only where a parent has already been lawfully habitually resident for five years and holds an unlimited right of residence.

Portugal moved sharply against families in 2026. [Organic Law 1/2026](https://diariodarepublica.pt/dr/detalhe/lei-organica/1-2026-1123539996), in force on 19 May 2026, now requires a parent to have been lawfully resident for five years at the moment of the birth, and requires a declaration; the previous text asked for one year. Ordinary naturalisation rose at the same time from five years to seven for CPLP and EU nationals and ten for everyone else.

Italy sets the longest child's clock in the group. [Article 4(2) of Law 91/1992](https://www.normattiva.it/atto/caricaDettaglioAtto?atto.dataPubblicazioneGazzetta=1992-02-15&atto.codiceRedazionale=092G0162&atto.articolo.numero=4&atto.articolo.sottoArticolo=1&tipoDettaglio=multivigenza) requires legal residence without interruption from birth until majority, followed by a declaration within a year, while the parent naturalises after ten. Law 74/2025 amended article 4 and left paragraph 2 untouched.

### Where the child's citizenship pulls the parent

In two jurisdictions the citizen child measurably accelerates the parent. Brazil grants a residence authorisation to a migrant who has a Brazilian child under article 37(II) of [Law 13.445/2017](https://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/_ato2015-2018/2017/lei/l13445.htm), with family reunion separately available under article 30(I)(i), and article 66 cuts that parent's ordinary naturalisation from four years to one; since Brazil confers nationality on all born in its territory, the sequence starts at the birth. Mexico reduces naturalisation from five years to two for a person with Mexican children by birth, under article 20, fracción I, inciso b) of the Nationality Law.

Argentina's route survives at a lower grade. [Decree 366/2025](https://www.boletinoficial.gob.ar/detalleAviso/primera/326096/20250529), in force from 29 May 2025, replaced article 22 of Law 25.871 and deleted the limb treating the spouse, children and parents of Argentine nationals as permanent residents; article 23(ñ) now offers the same relatives a temporary family-reunification residence instead. Provisions of the same decree dealing with naturalisation were held unconstitutional between the parties in federal litigation during 2026, while the article 22 substitution stands.

## What the child's passport costs

Acquisition is only half of the calculation, because a second citizenship attaches duties that outlast any reason for acquiring it. Two recur across the jurisdictions above. The first is fiscal and belongs to the United States: citizenship carries worldwide taxation and reporting for life, so a child who has never lived there still files, and an [FBAR](https://www.irs.gov/businesses/comparison-of-form-8938-and-fbar-requirements) falls due once foreign accounts exceed $10 000 at any point in the year. Renunciation costs $450 [from 13 April 2026](https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/03/13/2026-04931/schedule-of-fees-for-consular-services-fee-for-administrative-processing-of-request-for-certificate), down from $2 350, and the section 877A exit tax still reaches anyone unable to certify five years of compliance, whatever their wealth.

The second is military and attaches earlier than families expect. [Singapore](https://www.cmpb.gov.sg/parents-guide/overseas-pre-enlistees/) makes every male citizen and permanent resident liable for National Service from the age of thirteen, second-generation dependant permanent residents expressly included; leaving the country for two years or more from that age requires an exit permit and a bond of S$75 000 or half the parents' combined annual income, whichever is higher. Israel applies its defence service law to every Israeli citizen, including those living permanently abroad and holding an additional nationality, with registration due from sixteen years and four months. Both liabilities belong in the assessment of a [second passport](https://wiki.private.law/en/second-passport-plan-b) alongside the mobility it buys.

> ⚠️ **A minor cannot renounce, and the duties do not wait for majority.** A child acquires these obligations at birth or on the parents' declaration, while the exit from them opens only at adulthood and on conditions the family cannot control — the section 877A certification requires five years of filings that were never made, and Singapore's exit-permit regime binds from thirteen. The practical rule is that a passport taken for a child is assessed over the two decades of duty it carries, alongside the access it gives.

## When the parent's status fails

Everything above rests on the parent's permission, and a dependent child's permission is engineered to fall with it. The mechanics of cessation, revocation and children ageing out of dependant status belong to the [life cycle of a migration status](https://wiki.private.law/en/migration-status-lifecycle); what matters here is the effect on the entitlements this page describes.

Under the United Kingdom's [Skilled Worker rules](https://www.gov.uk/guidance/immigration-rules/immigration-rules-appendix-skilled-worker) a child is granted permission ending on the same date as whichever parent's permission ends first, and the Singapore equivalent is set out in [Dependant's Pass and the right to work](https://wiki.private.law/en/singapore-dependant-pass-work). Article 16(3) of [Directive 2003/86/EC](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX%3A32003L0086) lets a Member State withdraw or refuse to renew a family member's permit where the sponsor's residence ends and the family member has no autonomous right yet. Article 15 requires that autonomous permit at the latest after five years, for the spouse or partner and for a child who has reached majority, on conditions left to national law by article 15(4).

One provision runs the other way. Article 12(3) of Directive 2004/38/EC preserves the residence rights of children enrolled at an educational establishment, and of the parent with custody, until their studies are completed, even where the Union citizen on whom the family's status depended has died or left. It applies only to families built around an EU citizen.

> 🍓 The controlling distinction is between holding a status and satisfying the test a particular entitlement uses. Tuition, admission, grants and a child's citizenship each run on their own key and their own clock, and a permit that answers one of them answers none of the others by implication. England requires settlement for the fee, the EU requires five years for equal treatment, Spain requires one year for the child and ten for the parent, and Italy reverses that order. The planning question is which clock started when.

## Q/A

### Fees and admission

### **Does a residence permit give my child the local tuition rate?**

Only where the rule keys on residence, and then only at the hardness that state has chosen. Italy comes closest to accepting an ordinary permit: a qualifying title takes the applicant out of the reserved quota and onto Italian terms under article 39(5) of Legislative Decree 286/1998. England requires settlement, meaning indefinite leave to remain, plus three years of ordinary residence that was not wholly or mainly for education, so a Skilled Worker dependant of six years' standing still pays the overseas rate. The Netherlands keys mainly on nationality. The country's own test has to be identified before the permit is assumed to carry the outcome.

### **Does Directive 2003/109 guarantee equal treatment in education?**

It guarantees equal treatment in "education and vocational training, including study grants in accordance with national law", and that last phrase returns the grant question to the Member State. Article 11(2) additionally lets a state require that the resident's usual residence lie in its territory, and article 11(3)(b) lets it impose language requirements and specific educational prerequisites for university access. The right attaches to long-term resident status, which arrives after five years of legal and continuous residence, so it becomes available in the sixth year of a family's stay.

### **Is the admission quota or the fee the bigger obstacle?**

The quota, because a fee is a number the family can act on and a quota is not. Where a reserved pool exists, as it does in the German Länder and in Italy, the applicant is not competing against the general field at all; the same marks that would win a place in the open pool can lose one inside a pool of single-digit percentage size, and the family learns this only from the rejection. The fee gap, by contrast, is visible from the prospectus and can be planned against years ahead. Spain is the reminder that a country can leave the pool open and still send foreign qualifications down a separate procedural track.

### **If we qualify for the local rate, do we also qualify for grants and loans?**

The two questions separate, and in England they separate by the kind of support rather than by the test. The tuition fee loan follows the same reckoning as the fee itself, so a family that has secured the home rate has usually secured the borrowing that pays it; the maintenance loan sits behind the narrower settled-status route, so living costs can remain unfunded while tuition is covered. Spain is the cleaner case, because a single residence condition opens the state grant system on the terms citizens enjoy. Germany makes the answer depend on which residence title the parent holds, and a study permit is not one of them.

### Children and citizenship

### **Is it true that our child becomes a citizen faster than we do?**

In some countries by a wide margin and in others not at all, so the direction has to be checked per jurisdiction. Spain gives the widest gap, at one year of legal continuous residence for a child born in Spanish territory against ten years for the parent. France asks nothing of the parents' status outside Mayotte, granting nationality at majority or by declaration from thirteen. Germany gives it at birth, but only once a parent has accumulated five years and an unlimited right of residence. Italy requires unbroken residence from birth to majority, and Portugal moved in the same direction in May 2026.

### **Does a child's citizenship help the parents?**

In parts of Latin America the child's status is itself a ground for the parent's, which is the strongest version of the effect: the birth produces a citizen immediately, the parent's residence follows from the relationship, and the naturalisation clock is cut for the same reason. Brazil and Mexico both work this way and are set out above. The pattern is worth checking rather than assuming, because it is politically exposed — Argentina withdrew the permanent-residence limb in 2025 and left a weaker temporary one. In most of Europe a citizen child strengthens the parent's case on family and humanitarian grounds without opening a separate accelerated route.

### **Can a child give up a citizenship taken on their behalf?**

Not while a minor, and rarely on clean terms afterwards. United States renunciation is performed in person before a consular officer and costs $450 since April 2026, but a young adult who has never filed cannot certify the five years of compliance that section 877A requires, which makes them a covered expatriate irrespective of wealth; the Relief Procedures for Certain Former Citizens can cure that where the tax at stake is small and net worth is under $2 000 000, and they apply only after renunciation. Singapore withholds renunciation of permanent residence where National Service obligations are outstanding.

### **What happens to the children if our own status fails?**

A dependent child's permission is built to expire with the parent's. In the United Kingdom a child's Skilled Worker permission ends on the same date as whichever parent's permission ends first. Under EU law article 16(3) of Directive 2003/86/EC allows withdrawal of a family member's permit when the sponsor's residence ends, while article 15 requires an autonomous permit at the latest after five years and only for adult children. The durable protection is article 12(3) of Directive 2004/38/EC, which preserves the residence of enrolled children and their custodial parent until studies are completed, in families built around an EU citizen.

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## Factual claims

- The legal backbone for a third-country national is article 11 of Directive 2003/109/EC.
- A Skilled Worker's dependant who has lived in London for six years therefore holds a lawful permit, pays local tax and is charged as an overseas student.
- Italy operates a contingente riservato, a set of places reserved per course for visa-requiring international applicants who compete only against each other, and article 39(5) is the door out of it.

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