Schools and Education in Costa Rica

Primary education and high school

Costa Rica’s educational system is of good quality. Many Costa Ricans send their children to private schools, which are also excellent. If you wish to settle in the country for a short period of time, you might prefer to take your children to a school with a class calendar matching the American one (which happens to be very similar to most European systems), going from September to June.

Some of these schools are bilingual and in some others, the subjects are taught exclusively in English. They are usually internationally accredited and follow the so-called International Baccalaureate programme, intended to provide schools with an international curriculum intended to be acceptable to universities around the world. There are several of them in the Central Valley and in coastal areas where there is a sizeable presence of foreigners.

The usual Costa Rican school calendar, though, goes from February to December, thus adapting to traditional harvest seasons in Costa Rican agriculture.



Universities

State universities are of good quality, being the University of Costa Rica the most important one. Competition is strong to join them, as they are financed by the government and cost for the pupil is very reasonable.

There are also private universities, more expensive although in some of them the complete curriculum is shorter.