Schooling and childcare in Rio de Janeiro

Two systems that do not talk to each other

Municipal schools, covering educação infantil and ensino fundamental, are enrolled through matricula.rio, run by the Secretaria Municipal de Educação. State schools, which is where ensino médio mostly sits, go through an entirely separate portal, Matrícula Fácil at matriculafacil.rj.gov.br, run by SEEDUC-RJ. Nothing on one site points usefully at the other, and parents who find only matricula.rio miss the state system completely. Work out which network your child's year group belongs to before you start.

The municipal round

The municipal site runs entirely online and stays open 24 hours a day, every day including weekends and public holidays, for the length of the official window, and the round the site currently shows ran from 4 to 31 August. What it takes is a pré-inscrição rather than an enrolment, so families need to be in the city, with a CPF and an address, well before it opens, and then follow the allocation. The binding calendar and the criteria for each round are published as a formal resolution in the Diário Oficial do Rio, and that gazette notice, not the website, is the authoritative date.

• Questions and out-of-window cases go to the Coordenadoria Regional de Educação for your area, or to 1746 and (21) 3460-1746.
• The Secretaria Municipal de Educação is at Rua Afonso Cavalcanti 455, Cidade Nova.
• What documents a foreign child needs, and how one with no Brazilian school record is placed, is not published. Ask the CRE directly rather than guessing.

The state system, and mid-year entry

Matrícula Fácil covers regular ensino médio, technical itineraries in Technology, Sustainability, Arts and Sports, innovation pathways, teacher-training courses, and EJA at both secondary and middle-school level. It separates Inscrição, for those without a place, from Transferência de Aluno Seeduc, for pupils already in the state network, and a detailed enrolment manual is downloadable from the portal. Unlike the single annual municipal round, the state network has mid-year entry points: in September 2026 the portal showed EJA enrolments for the second semester of 2026 open, with the other modalities continuing normally. The inscription dates for the 2027 school year were not published anywhere readable, so take them from the portal itself.

• SEEDUC enrolment line: (21) 2380-9055.

International schools, and which calendar you join

Escola Americana do Rio de Janeiro accepts applications year-round with no fixed deadline, subject to seat availability, and says it welcomes international applicants at any point in the year. It runs a northern-hemisphere calendar, August to June, with the Brazilian summer break from mid-December to early February and a winter break from mid-June to the end of July. Brazilian national schools are generally understood to run the other way, February to December, so a February arrival lands mid-year at EARJ and at the start of the year in a Brazilian school. Decide which calendar you are joining before you apply, because it is hard to unpick later.

• EARJ Gávea: Estrada da Gávea 132, +55 21 2125 9000.
• EARJ Barra: Rua Colbert Coelho 155, +55 21 3747 2000.
• Applications and tours go through OpenApply at earj.openapply.com.
• The British School of Rio de Janeiro and the Escola Alemã Corcovado are the other established options. Take their admission process and calendar from the schools themselves.
• Fees are not published on the schools' public pages. Ask for the fee schedule in writing, including enrolment and materials.