Hi Nyoni,
It sounds similar to our situation.
My husband applied under the SMC with a job offer but due to his profession, a full residency visa cannot be approved until he completes some supervised practice and does a Law & Ethics interview. Our SMC visa application is approved in principal pending this.
The supervised practice has to completed in NZ so INZ have issued a Work Visa for my husband as he cannot do any work without one.
We didn't have to pay for the Work Visa though he had to 'apply' for it. Our passports were returned within a few days once we had confirmed return tickets for me and the children and my husband had confirmed his start date in NZ. Once he has completed his supervised practice, we have to return our passports to the London office for our application to be finalised. They've said that they will get the ball rolling once we have confirmed the sign off from the L&E interview to speed things up so that when our passports arrive at the office, all they have to do is add the Blue Stickers. They will then be returned to us in NZ.
Our CO advised that the children and I cannot be dependants on my husband's Work Visa. The children and I have to enter NZ on Visitors Visas which means that I cannot work and the children cannot get free schooling from the age of 5.
We have got around this by enrolling my son as an International student for the term under a Student Visa. My daughter who is 4, for some reason still gets the free 20 hours at kindergarten. I queried this and offered to pay and they said we didn't need to!
Your best point of reference is your CO though - we have found ours to be most helpful and exceptionally patient with the amount of emails and questions fired off at her!
Hope this helps?
Bel