- Suriname stands at a pivotal moment. As the country seeks to transform its natural resource wealth into lasting prosperity, one question is paramount: how can it unlock human capital as a driver of inclusive and sustainable growth?
- To help answer that question, the Government of Suriname and the IDB convened an international conference that brought together policymakers, educators, global experts, development partners, and youth representatives to explore the evidence, experiences, and policies that have successfully strengthened human capital around the world.
- The discussions highlighted several priorities for Suriname’s human capital agenda, including stronger partnerships between education and the private sector, investments in infrastructure and digital readiness, greater support for teacher professionalization, and increased use of evidence to inform policy, guide investments, and strengthen accountability.
Across South Korea, Singapore and many other countries in the world, the same pattern keeps showing up: the countries that transformed their economies did not wait for growth to improve education and skills development. Countries transform when they invest deliberately in their people.
Suriname’s coming oil and gas boom could become a turning point for inclusive and sustainable growth, if the country succeeds in strengthening institutions, investing in people, closing infrastructure gaps, and protecting its natural capital. As highlighted in BID Economics: Landscape of Opportunities in Suriname, the key question is whether Suriname can turn resource wealth into lasting, inclusive growth.
Suriname increasingly recognizes human capital as an essential driver of economic diversification, productivity, and social inclusion. This vision was at the center of the conference Investing Today, Transforming Tomorrow: Unlocking Human Capital as the Engine for Growth in Suriname, co-organized by the Government of Suriname and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). The first phase of the conference brought together 300 participants, including policymakers, international experts, educators, development partners, and youth representatives to reflect on a central question: how can countries unlock human capital to accelerate sustainable and inclusive growth?
The discussions of the event combined international evidence, national perspectives, and youth voices to reflect on Suriname’s opportunities and challenges. The reflections generated during the first phase of the conference can be synthesized into ten foundational insights that may help inform Suriname’s path forward.
1. Investing in Human Capital Is a Deliberate National Choice—Not a Byproduct of Growth
Development outcomes are not automatic. International experience showed that countries that successfully transformed their economies made human capital a strategic priority rather than waiting for economic growth to generate better education outcomes.
The experiences of Singapore and South Korea illustrated this lesson clearly. Singapore aligned education, workforce development, and skills policies with its broader economic transformation agenda, continuously adapting institutions to changing economic priorities.
South Korea invested heavily in education even during periods of economic hardship, laying the foundation for sustained productivity and innovation. For Suriname, this insight highlights that converting today’s opportunities into long-term prosperity will require deliberate and sustained investment in people.
2. Learning Outcomes—Not Years of Schooling—Drive Long-Term Growth
Throughout the conference, one question emerged repeatedly: what kind of education investment drives economic growth? As the graphic below shows, years of schooling alone do not explain differences in economic performance.
Comparing economic growth and schooling attainment across countries, Eric Hanushek and Ludger Woessmann (2015) in The Knowledge Capital of Nations demonstrated that countries with similar levels of educational attainment often experience different growth trajectories because students leave school with different levels of knowledge and skills. The lesson is clear what students learn is what creates lasting economic returns.
3. Teachers Are the Most Powerful Lever for Improving Learning Outcomes
If learning is the objective, teachers remain the most influential factor inside education systems. Improving learning outcomes requires treating teaching as a respected profession supported by continuous development and clear expectations.
International experience demonstrated that sustained investment in teacher quality, instructional leadership, collaboration, and professional development can improve both excellence and equity.
Ontario, Canada, showed how strengthening teacher support systems and leadership contributed to improved outcomes across a large and diverse education system. South Korea reinforced the importance of elevating the social status of teaching and creating strong professional pathways.
4. Accelerating Learning Requires Coherent Systemic Reform
The discussions also demonstrated that lasting improvements in learning outcomes require coherent and systemic reform. Sobral, Brazil, illustrated how aligning curriculum, assessment, school leadership, incentives, monitoring systems, and targeted support around a shared objective can generate remarkable results.
As a result, Sobral transformed learning outcomes and rose from 1,336th place to first in Brazil’s Basic Education Development Index (IDEB), becoming a leading example of how systemic reforms can improve educational quality and equity when reforms operate as part of a coherent long-term vision.
5. Relevant Education Supports Economic Diversification and Opportunity
Improving education quality alone is not enough. Education systems must also remain relevant and responsive to changing labor market demands.
International experiences emphasized the importance of building stronger connections between education systems and productive sectors to anticipate skills needs and support economic competitiveness.
The experience of Sofofa in Chile demonstrated how skills intelligence and collaboration with employers can help individuals better understand labor market transitions and identify pathways to close skills gaps. For Suriname, strengthening education relevance represents an opportunity to prepare learners for future growth sectors and support economic diversification.
6. Cultural Diversity and Inclusion Are Strategic Assets
Educational quality and inclusion are not competing against goals—they reinforce one another. Students learn more effectively when education reflects their identities, languages, and experiences.
In a country such as Suriname, where cultural and linguistic diversity is a defining characteristic, diversity represents an opportunity rather than a challenge. International experience supported this insight.
The JADENKÄ program in Panama demonstrated how culturally responsive and bilingual education can improve learning outcomes while strengthening identity and belonging. Recognizing and valuing diversity can help education systems become more inclusive and more effective.
7. Supporting Students Means More Than Expanding Access
Education systems must ensure that students not only enter school but also remain, learn, and successfully complete their educational journeys. International experiences highlighted that educational inequalities often begin before children enter formal schooling, and that coordinated support across different stages of life can improve long-term outcomes.
Experiences in early childhood development demonstrated strong returns through investments in parenting support and early stimulation. At later stages, school feeding programs improve nutrition, attendance, learning, and long-term human capital outcomes.
While programs such as Brazil’s Pé-de-Meia illustrate how financial incentives linked to participation and completion can support educational trajectories. Together, these experiences reinforced that improving outcomes requires combining quality education with broader social support.
8. Technology and Artificial Intelligence Must Strengthen Human Potential
Technology and artificial intelligence are increasingly reshaping how countries expand access and prepare learners for changing labor markets. Digital transformation can broaden access to quality education—particularly for remote communities—but only when equity, connectivity, devices, and digital literacy are prioritized.
To prepare learners ready for changing labor market, evidence consistently showed that technology alone does not improve learning outcomes. Its impact depends on how effectively it supports pedagogy and strengthens teaching.
Experiences such as the Manaus Educational Media Center in Brazil demonstrated how technology can expand access to quality education in remote communities across the Amazon by combining television, internet, multimedia content, and teacher support. For Suriname, this represents an opportunity to build an inclusive and future-ready education system that equips learners with both human and technical skills.
9. Partnerships and Institutional Capacity Sustain Reform
Across all experiences, one lesson stood out repeatedly: sustainable reform requires collaboration. Strong results emerged when governments, educators, communities, employers, development partners, families, and civil society aligned around shared goals.
Yet partnerships alone are not sufficient. Successful reform also depends on governance, institutional capacity, accountability, implementation capability, and continuity over time. Transformation is rarely the result of a single intervention. It is the result of institutions working together consistently over many years.
10. Reform Must Be Locally Owned and Built for the Long Term
International experiences provide inspiration, but countries that achieve the most significant progress adapt global lessons to local realities rather than replicate external models. For Suriname, this means building solutions that reflect national priorities, institutional capacities, cultural diversity, and social aspirations.
Long-term reform depends on national leadership, meaningful stakeholder participation, implementation capacity, sustainable financing, institutional coordination, and sustained political commitment. Transformation must remain progressive, allowing space for learning, adaptation, and sustainability.
From Dialogue to Action
These ten insights reinforced a common objective: building an education system that is more equitable, future-ready, and responsive to the aspirations of young people. Building on this momentum, the Government of Suriname convened a second phase of the conference on June 8-10, 2026, in Paramaribo focused on translating dialogue into action.
Over three days, 433 participants from more than 60 institutions worked across 17 thematic working groups to develop recommendations for a shared roadmap for education reform. The event was organized around three theme: inclusion and opportunity; lifelong learning, skills development, and teacher quality; and partnerships for impact.
The discussions generated strong consensus around a clear set of priorities:
- strengthening partnerships between education and the private sector, particularly to enhance TVET,
- investing in educational infrastructure, accelerating digital readiness, improving teacher compensation and professionalization,
- strengthening education management information systems, and
- expanding the use of evidence to inform policy, prioritize investments, monitor progress, and strengthen accountability.
This process laid the foundation for the country’s Suriname Human Capital Vision 2035 and Action Plan 2026–2035. The next—and most important—step will be translating this collective vision into sustained implementation.
Unique Opportunity for Suriname
Suriname now has a unique opportunity. Educational outcomes remain a challenge: in terms of attainment, only 40% of the population has completed primary education and less than 10% has completed higher education. Learning outcomes also remain low. At the end of primary school, only one quarter of students achieve proficiency in mathematics, while at the end of lower secondary, only half of 15-year-old students reach basic proficiency in mathematics (Examination Bureau, 2022).
At the same time, recent results demonstrate that progress is possible. Suriname has improved learning and completion outcomes with support from the IDB. For instance, the share of students achieving satisfactory scores in primary mathematics increased by 16 percentage points (from 25% to 41%), while on-time primary completion (through grade 8) increased from 56% to 91%, with particularly strong results in rural districts such as Sipaliwini and Brokopondo.
Additionally, the IDB Lab project piloted a new educational model that resulted in a 15.1% improvement in mathematics outcomes among 352 students in grades 9 and 10 across six lower secondary pilot schools.
The conversations have begun. The evidence exists. International experience demonstrates that meaningful transformation is possible. The challenge ahead is to translate ambition into sustained action. By investing today in its people, Suriname can build the foundations for a more prosperous, inclusive, resilient, and sustainable future—one where human capital becomes not only an outcome of development, but its engine.
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To explore the key insight and international examples in greater depth, we invite you to read the publication about the first phase of the conference.