School in Costa Rica: free and compulsory from preschool to bachillerato, with a school year from February to December

Yes, your children can go to public school, and it is free: article 78 of the constitution makes preschool, the educación general básica and the educación diversificada compulsory and "in the public system free and paid for by the Nation", and obliges the state to spend at least eight percent of gross domestic product on it each year. The school year runs from February to December. What it costs at a private or international school depends on the contract with that school. The trap is the calendar: whoever arrives in summer, as most Dutch people do, lands in the middle of a running year that only ends in December, and the recognition of the Dutch school years requires apostilles you have to get put on in the Netherlands.

Which levels are there?

The Ley Fundamental de Educación of 1957 divides the system into three layers, and the constitution makes the first two and the upper cycle compulsory.

Level	What it is	Legal basis
Educación preescolar	preschool: health, habits, play and observation	Ley 2160, article 12
Educación primaria	primary school	Ley 2160, article 13
Educación media, first cycle	lower secondary, the tercer ciclo of the educación general básica	Ley 2160, articles 14 to 16
Educación media, second cycle	the educación diversificada, with the bachillerato at the end	Ley 2160, article 16

Article 15 says secondary education lasts "at least five years", under a plan with a general part and an exploratory part meant to discover aptitude and interests; article 16 divides those years over the two cycles. Whoever comes from the Netherlands with a twelve-year-old therefore steps into the lower cycle of a school type that ends at sixteen or seventeen with the bachillerato — the diploma that gives access to university.

When does the school year start?

The ministry of education, the MEP, sets the calendar every year. For 2026:

When	What
9 to 20 February	two weeks of staff training, without pupils
23 February	first day of lessons
29 March to 5 April	Semana Santa
23 February to 3 July	first period
6 to 17 July	mid-year holiday
20 July to 9 December	second period
9 December	last day of lessons
10 and 11 December	graduation ceremonies

Whoever arrives in July can have their child join at the start of the second period; whoever lands in autumn has a few months of running year and then two months' holiday — enough to get used to Spanish before the new year begins at the end of February.

How do the Dutch school years count?

Through the equiparación by the MEP's Dirección de Gestión y Evaluación de la Calidad. Since Costa Rica joined the apostille convention on 14 December 2011, the documents with an apostille suffice for a Dutch diploma or transfer certificate; only apostilles issued after that date are valid. The MEP asks for:

• the form, and your identity document (or a signed authorisation if someone else does it for you; for a minor the parent does it, with proof of the parental relationship);
• original and copy of the diploma of completed primary or secondary education, apostilled;
• original and copy of the grade certificates of all years leading to that diploma, also apostilled;
• a translation by an official translator if it is not in Spanish.

The decision takes five working days; for technical programmes twenty, because a second directorate looks at it. What the MEP does not recognise: distance, correspondence or home education, and schools not recognised by the ministry in the country of origin.

Have the apostilles put on before you leave. The MEP wants the certificate and the grade list of every year, each with its own apostille from the Dutch court, and you can't get those from Costa Rica. Ask the school in the Netherlands for the complete file on deregistration, and have the translation made in Costa Rica by a translator on the foreign ministry's list.

Public or private?

Public school is in Spanish and, as the constitution says, free. In the Central Valley and on the Guanacaste coast there are also private and international schools, often bilingual; what they cost belongs in the cost indication for Costa Rica, not in this article. Whoever goes to such a school keeps in mind that there too the MEP's bachillerato is the diploma that counts in Costa Rica.

What deliberately isn't here: the age limits per class and the school's own enrolment documents. Those are in the MEP's enrolment regulation, which was not checked at the source at the time of writing; the school knows them. And the Dutch child benefit stops on departure — that is in the article on AOW, pension and tax.

In Vertrekklaar this is phase 3 of 5 of the journey, step 3.5: the same steps, but for your situation — in your order, tickable, and with the deadlines watched. See the whole journey to Costa Rica or go straight to step 3.5 in the open plan.