Costa Rica News – I wouldn’t want to be the person in charge of giving out copies of birth certificates this month! There have been some schools requesting that each child have his or her birth certificate in order to register for kindergarten or first grade.
Each student…in each school…that’s a lot of paperwork processing.
At times, the registry has had to issue 10,000 birth certificates in a week! Because of that administrative disaster, the Ministry of Public Education has stepped in to help. They have warned parents that a birth certificate is an “illegal requirement” to register their kids for school.
The administrative vice minister, Rocio Solis, explained that the schools have access to the information they need on the internet, and that there is simply no reason to overwhelm the registry by having them print one for each child in the country. That would be an excessive procedure to ask of them.
The preregistration process is meant to estimate the demand in each school in order to place the correct amount of teachers in each area. Those entering first grade of kindergarten must simply request a ballot of enrollment, without needing to bring a birth certificate. MEP also warns that it is illegal to be charged any fee to enroll your child in school.
