You are moving with children and you want the school year: start date, holidays, exam weeks. We could not find that calendar published, and a school calendar is a thing families book flights and start dates around, so a guessed one is worse than none. This article says exactly what we looked at, what we found instead, and where the answer genuinely lives.
What we checked, and what was not there
We read the page of the Ministerie van Onderwijs, Wetenschap en Cultuur on the Surinamese government portal gov.sr on 24 October 2026. It carries ministry news and navigation. It carries no school calendar, no holiday schedule and no examination timetable: we searched that page for the terms schooljaar, vakantie, examen and kalender and found none of them.
So the semester structure that circulates for Suriname — a first semester running from July to December, a second from January to June, each about six months — is not in this article. We could not source it, and a family that books around it may be wrong by months.
Where the answer actually is
A school calendar in Suriname is set in two places, and neither is a guide:
- The ministry's own published resolution for the school year in question. It is issued per year, which is exactly why no evergreen article can carry it. Ask the ministry for the resolution covering the year your child starts.
- The school itself. Private and international schools in Paramaribo publish their own term dates, and those are the dates that bind your family. Ask in writing for the term dates, the examination weeks and the enrollment deadline, and ask for them for the coming year rather than the current one.
Ask a third question while you are there: in which month does the school accept a mid-year entrant, and what happens to a child who arrives between terms. That answer decides your moving date far more than the calendar does.
What a school year does cost, with a source
One school-related figure we can give you with a source and a date. The published fee list of the Nassy Brouwer College in Paramaribo, read on 5 October 2026, shows tuition per child per month:
- years 1 to 5: EUR 124.72, or USD 140.00;
- year 6: EUR 149.67, or USD 168.00.
Two things to take from that beyond the amount. The fee is billed monthly, not per term, so a mid-year arrival does not pay for the months before it. And the school's own structure runs to a sixth year that is priced higher — a final year is treated differently, which is worth knowing before you plan an exit date around a child in that year. This is one school's published list, not a national average.
Rate used below. Where a euro or dollar figure is converted, this article uses 1 USD = 37.6789 SRD and 1 EUR = 42.3731 SRD, the rate of 24 October 2026. A conversion is only as fresh as its date, so take the rate again on the day your own payment is due.
The school-cost deduction in the Income Tax Act
If you will be a taxpayer in Suriname, there is a published rule about school costs that almost no guide mentions. Article 18 paragraph 1 sub e of the Wet Inkomstenbelasting 1922 allows the deduction of necessary study costs paid by the taxpayer for the vocational education of his own, step- or foster children — but only insofar as those costs exceed 10 percent of gross income, and with the express exclusion that no deduction is granted for kost, inwoning, kleding en zakgeld van inwonende kinderen: board, lodging, clothing and pocket money of children living at home.
So tuition may count toward that threshold and the cost of keeping the child at home does not. Keep the school's invoices separate from everything else from the first month — reconstructing the split a year later is how the deduction gets lost. Read on 24 October 2026.
Two more deductions that land in the same household
From the same article, for the same taxpayer: necessary costs connected with illness, confinement, accident, disability or death of the taxpayer, spouse and minor own or foster children are deductible insofar as they exceed 10 percent of gross income (sub f); and for each resident minor own or foster child of 18 or older who cannot support themselves because of lasting physical or mental disability, SRD 8,000 comes off gross income, provided no benefit is received for that child on that ground (paragraph 2).
These are the figures a family moving with children should take to the Belastingdienst, rather than a semester schedule nobody published.
What to do with a start date you cannot look up
- Write to two or three schools before you fix a moving date, and ask for next year's term dates in writing.
- Ask the ministry for the resolution setting the school year, by year.
- Ask about mid-year entry explicitly, and about which documents a transferring pupil needs.
- Treat any article that prints fixed semester months as unsourced until the school confirms it, including this one if you ever see months appear in it.
Where to check
The ministry page we read is the Ministerie van Onderwijs, Wetenschap en Cultuur on gov.sr. The tuition figures come from the published fee list of the Nassy Brouwer College. The deductions are in the Wet Inkomstenbelasting 1922 as published by the Belastingdienst Suriname. All read on 24 October 2026. For term dates and examination weeks there is no substitute for the school and the ministry.
AI-Generated Content: This article was created with AI assistance and may contain inaccuracies. Please verify important information with official sources.
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Last updated: October 2026
