schools

It’s 2026, and we have lived in Spain for about 5 years now. In that time, we have done the school registration process at least 3 times, including going through open hours (puertas abiertas) season, so I have decided to document our process for this year.

To be clear, this blog post will not be complete upon it’s first posting. The process to get your kids into school in Spain is a long one, especially if you do it thoughtfully and correctly. While going to visit schools (puertas abiertas) is not a requirement of enrollment, it IS a requirement of being prudent in your decision making.

Here is the first youtube video of this process. The schools mentioned in the post below are documented (without name) in the video. There are many more details in the written post about the schools, however I have some details about the schooling process in general that are in the video, but not in this post.

Neurodiversity Information https://universidadeuropea.com/blog/acneae-acnee/

Basic Steps

Here is a run down of the basic steps of finding a publicly funded school in Spain. The private school situation is dependent on the individual school, and can be more flexible (and expensive).

• Research schools
• Open House (Puertas Abiertas)
• General School Application
• Get Assigned a School
• Register for that school

Now, unfortunately, each one of these steps can feel like a monumental task, and the whole process itself takes about 6 months, if you are lucky, and depending on how long it takes you to research the schools. For me, it usually includes a spreadsheet at some point.

Side note: Once we complete each major step of the process, I will be posting a video to recap on youtube.

How to Research Schools

Unfortunately, in Spain, there is no definitive database which is accessible to the public, in order to use to learn about schools. There is no true ranking system here, and people are slow to steer you away from certain schools, even if they don’t like them for themselves, unless there is a major reason not to go there (bullying, abuse, etc). For this reason, you will have to be very pro-active in learning about the schools, and even then, you may miss things that in retrospect, you would have considered very important.

How I research schools

From the start, I create a list of priorities for the “perfect school”. This is a general list, so it includes things like school hours (priority), location (bus or walking or either?), which foreign languages are offered, which extracurriculars are offered, class size, do they assign computers to students to use over textbooks, size of the school, any special education considerations (like neurodiversity). I have more on that in the video below.

In Zaragoza, I also reference the school vacancy list from the previous year, which is accessible online. Before I share the link, I want to stress that this is the vacancies list that was available AFTER school enrollment in the previous year, so 2025 for now. Any spots available, are those which were not filled with regular enrollment. This information helps to give me an idea of what the “popular schools” are, and from there I have to determine why they are popular- is it just because of their historical reputation, their location, or because it is a great school? Here is that link.

A very helpful local has also given me this insight. This person said to look at this list. It is for the first grade entrances. She uses it to tell her how desired a specific school is. If the applications (solicitudes) exceeds the vacancies, or is close to it, then this could be an indicator of the quality of the school. That list is here.

The schools that I will choose to study from these list have already made it to my “short list” of school possibilities. I use this list to possibly rule any of them out. If the disparity between vacancies and solicitudes is too large, then they have to go.

My next step is to ask about schools via social media, to search them out by name on reddit, to search news articles about them online, and to ask anyone and everyone if they know anything about any of the schools on my short list. Basically, I am looking for any indication that any specific school from my list is very positive or very negative.

Full disclaimer: I have done this very process before and we ended up in a bad school. I believe this happened because I allowed my child, who was going to attend the school, to have too much of a weighted opinion, combined with that I had no local insight to the local system. I did not have access to people here who could chime into what is good or bad in Zaragoza. I now have a much better idea and am a tiny bit more confident in what I am doing. Tiny- but there is no other way to do this. You do your best, make your best effort, and then fix it if you need to, however you can. The YouTube video that I shared above, does into that type of situation.

Our complete history with the Spanish school system, is here.

By this point, I now have a shorter list. You may be wondering how long the list needs to be. Well, the answer will depend on your region in Spain. For Aragon, which is the autonomous region of Zaragoza, you need 7 schools to put on your general application form. You may need more or less, depending on where you are.

Now, it is not required to have the full list of schools, but if you don’t complete the list, then you run the risk of having your child placed into any random school with a spot. I will explain this later, and refer back to it, as our process goes on this year. However, I have explained it a bit in this video. I also talk about the process to get extra helps here as well.

Attending Open House

Starting in December or January, you will start to see open house (puertas abiertas) dates published at the various schools. If you are not here for that season, you can usually contact the school and ask for a visit, but it is much easier to go when they have them scheduled. You can find them on their social media accounts and/or on their websites.

Some schools will have a form to fill out in advance of your attendance, some will tell you to just show up, some schools will have multiple open houses, some will have only one. Some schools separate the primary (1st – 6th grade) open house from the secondary (ESO, 7th – 10th grade) open house, some don’t. As you will often here me say, it is not consistent.

Our Experience in 2026

Our First Steps

After completing all of the above steps, including asking my child’s school which centers they recommended, I had my list narrowed down to 8-9 schools. I removed the ones that were too far, I added another one based on parental insight from a friend’s network, and I then removed another one when I met a mother at a separate open house, who had a child at this other school, based on my boundaries list- it wouldn’t be a good fit. I have a few things that are deal breakers, and doing all of your work on a laptop is one of them, so off it went. I had 7 concertados and 3 public schools on the list, before we started visiting schools. After the second school visit, I was down to 6 concertados and 3 public schools, due to some insight that I received from the other parent that I met.

We have, thus far, completed two open houses. It is the first week of February. I have 3 more open houses currently on my agenda for the next 5 weeks, through mid-March. I have 3-4 schools which have not posted their open houses yet. I have one school that I am very interested in, which may not have an open house until after Semana Santa, which means that it will fall during the month of April, basically. The application window is not posted yet, and I do not know when it will be.

I am currently down to a list of 7 schools. I am of the opinion that I do not need to add any more schools to the list, although I may end up having to do that, based on the technology issue. There is one more school that seems to indicate on their website that they give out computers as a source of completing school work. We are going to call and confirm that with the school, and if they do this, we will not attend their open house, as planned. Our goal is to end up with 7 schools for the list, and to not leave *any* blanks, or anything up to chance, and to have them placed in order of preference.

Once I get to the application stage, will discuss it in detail, along with screen shots, etc, so check back as time progresses.

Our Open House Experience

As I mentioned, we have visited two schools up to this point. One was a public school, which I coincidently found from someone else’s post on Reddit, and then confirmed through my own social media account, by asking “the locals” about this school. All was positive, so we went to the open house. It was (disappointingly) on a school night, and “late” for us Americans. It started at 6pm. We left after 2.5 hours. I can not tell you how long it lasted, because we left after we had toured the building, but there are plenty of people still there. We got home and in bed so late, that my youngest did not go to school the next day, that’s how exhausting the process is… and we were only on our first open house.

Side note: We once went to an open house outside of Madrid, and it lasted for 3-4 hours!! We couldn’t believe it.

January Visit:

School #1 (Public; first school to visit, not necessarily first choice school)

At the public school open house, we were met with a series of speakers and a power point presentation. We were given a lot of information. They had 4 students there from different levels offered at the school, who were speaking about their respective experiences (this was ESO + Bachillerato). Because of the powerpoint, I was able to understand even more information than I could from the speaker (Spanish), and to take photos of the information, to add to my notes on the school later on, and for reminders of information.

I talk about how the school system in Spain is organized, in this video:

They gave us all of the data we could ever possibly need about the school, they had multiple people there from the school, plus the students, plus the head of AMPA (this is the PTA of Spain). She spoke of her experience at the school, as well as her three kid’s experiences. She also handed out agendas (school planners) to all of the kids, even my 5 year old who is far from ESO level was included, much to his delight (& mine). All of this left a good impression on me.

We then were dismissed to speak freely to the teachers, admin, etc, and to tour the school. We followed the crowd and were taken to the comedor (lunch room), zona de joven (a town hall thing in the school), the indoor gym area, the outdoor patio (for recreo or PE, it was large with basketball goals), and various classrooms (art, music, computer, etc).

The school was divided by floors, with each grade level being assigned a different floor. After we finished, we were directed to the library, where they had some books on display (this is a good place to get some insight into the deeper layers of the school), and english teachers available. These teachers had a high level of english- higher than any school in Spain that I have visited or that my kids have attended so far. They answered our questions, which were really some of our son’s concerns from things he had observed in the school, and then we left. I will share more details in the videos, from my very first impressions that night, so make sure you are subscribed to my youtube channel! 🙂

After this open house, I thought to ask my son about his preferences, ASIDE from foreign language options. I already knew those:

• Would he rather go to a school that required a uniform? (Public schools don’t, and some concertados don’t- although, to my knowledge, all concertados require a uniform for physical education days).

• Would he rather go to a public school, or to a catholic concertado?

• With that information, I moved this public school to the bottom of the list of 7. It was far out from my other child’s school, and my oldest had just given a preference for non-uniform wearing concertados. Since I only had one school to chose from, and had many more to visit, some much closer to us, it was prioritized as last, for the time being.

• Let’s see how that ends up in the end. Here is my current list:

• 7. School #1 (public school)

• 1-6 are unknown, and things could change.

February Visits:

School #2 (Concertado)

The next school was very different from the first school. It was:

• A concertado
• Guardaria, Primary, Secondary, no Bachillerato
• Uniforms worn daily

This is how it went:

We found the school, and walked in through the open gate. Seconds later, a man came out to open the door and let us in. He had a checklist, which he could not find my name on. On the school website, I did not see any indication that I needed to sign up for this open house. They had an extensive list of available dates, of which I chose the first one, and the indication that the school could be visited at anytime, so I hadn’t registered for the open house. All was well, he wrote my name on the form, realized we spoke english, and switched to a few english phrases.

Upon entry, we were greeted by some primary school students, who gave us a folder of information, and directed us to a rather small room for the event. Our previous open house had been in an auditorium of sorts, this one was in a classroom. The previous one had a couple hundred seats and desks, while this one had maybe 20 chairs, and it ended up not being enough. This was a classroom for one of their guardaria or infantil classes (somewhere between 0-5 year olds, depending on which one).

We were given the presentation by a woman who spoke very fast Spanish. There was no visual presentation. She was constantly referring to the brochure in the folder, and there was a lot of echo. My husband, who speaks Spanish natively, had a terrible time understanding her because of the level of her voice (low), combined with the echo. I was a lost duck.

However, I had numerous questions. I could read the brochure, which is what she was generally referencing. It was very broad. Things were not detailed. My husband, and myself when needed, ended up asking quite few detailed questions: school population size, teacher-student ratio, student number in a class, preferential access to any bachillerato program?, alternatives to religion class, monthly tuition cost, etc.

Side note: in Aragon, it is required to give an alternative to religion class. In the public schools, you are given an option for which religion class you want, or no religion class. In the catholic concertados, you are supposed to be given an alternative, but I have heard that sometimes they don’t follow through on this- so it is important to ask. You also want to ask how many students are in the alternative class. It’s a “values” (Valores) class. The number is important because it gives you an idea of how many students are not taking the religion class… will your child be the only one (this is really bad socially), etc?

After the talk from the woman, and the questions from the parents, were were directed to a school tour. We walked through the halls and up the stairs, floor by floor. We popped into one primary class, an english class of course (they are always promoting this at all of the schools, but it’s not that important to us, TBH). We also saw the chapel, and comedor (lunch room), and found out that ESO does not eat lunch at school (weird). I did see labeled rooms, which I liked. This is usually seen in TEA schools (schools that have special classrooms for kids with autism), but not in schools without it, like this one.

From there we went to the library. This library was about 1/3 the size of the public school library. There were some large tables with chairs, where we all sat down again. This time, they had a student who had been at the school for all of her education, along with her family members and siblings (very common here).

She spoke of her time here, how much she liked the school, etc. She was very well spoken and respectful. She came across in a good way to me. At this part of the meeting I TRIED to get information about extracurriculars, but they did not seem to be able to help me much with any clarity. To be honest, I did not get the impression that they knew what they offered, or when. Often schools will tell you that they can not be certain about extracurriculars because they are subcontracted out, and if there isn’t enough interest in the group offered, then they shut it down. Extracurriculars are not too popular there (weird to me), and you should not expect or depend on them in schools (I am still figuring that out, obviously). I have especially noticed that schools have less options for ESO than for Primary (I don’t know why, and I don’t like it).

After this part of the talk, we were offered coffee and cookies, and the opportunity to ask more questions individually. We did this, and then we left. I made my initial impressions video for youtube, and we went home and discussed what we each thought individually. This was my question for each of us, keeping in mind that I have a list of 7 schools that I need to make, and they need to be in ORDER of preference:

If you could only choose between school 1 and school 2, and did not have to consider the location of child #2’s school, which school would you choose for child #1?

The answer for all of us was school number 1, the public school. This was not what we went in expecting, but it was what we came out with, and now, the morning after, I still feel the same way.

Our current ranking is:

#6.school 1 (public)

#7. school 2 (concertado; one of the schools recommended by my son’s current teacher)

1-5 are unknown at the moment, but that will change, and these two schools could end up at the top of the list. Who knows!!?

School 3: Concertado

The third school we visited was a concertado. We entered through the front gate of the school and went to the receptionist office. We were the first to arrive. Three more families showed up, for a total of about 10 people. This was the smallest “puertas abiertas” that we had been to yet, and also what felt like the most informal one yet. After everyone who had signed up in advance showed up, we informed us that we were 2 and 2. Two secondary families and two primary families. He walked us from the office, up some stairs, to the indoor gym, then shared a little bit about the school and Physical Education (PE) between the two groups. Then we proceeded up some more stairs and into the small lunch room. It was kind of cute actually and typical of other schools “comedors” (lunch rooms) that I have seen.

From here, we were shuttled along to the garden and part of the outdoor recreo area. From there, we went inside of the school, saw some classrooms, met some teachers, and asked some questions. At this part of the process, the english teacher came out of her classroom, (you will notice this has happened before and seems to be a marketing point for the schools to show their english levels). She realized that my kids both spoke english, and since she had a younger group of kids in her classroom, she asked my youngest son if he would like to come inside. This is also very typical since my kids are fluent in english as their first language, and teachers want to kind of show off the wild english specimen who is roaming the halls today ;). HAHA. He went in and entertained them, and actually enjoyed the attention a lot. 😀

At this point, we were informed that this school uses computers in the classroom, and uses digital books in place of some textbooks. It does not seem to be in place of all of the textbooks, but it was a lot. They did say that it was optional, but that most of the students did use the laptops, so not using them would make a student stand out from the rest.

My kids have attended a school in the past, which used laptops, and it was not a great experience. It wasn’t even a good experience. We really hated it for many reasons. I was taken aback by this information, because I was under the impression that schools were decreasing the use of technology in the class room, in this form.

From here, we were shown the “library”, which honestly left a lot to be desired, and were seated in some arranged chairs, where we were able to ask more questions. I asked about the American High School Diploma, which he speaker couldn’t tell me much about and didn’t seem to interested in it. I have since decided that I believe that it is another marketing tactic of the schools. Little do they know that in the United States, homeschooling is completely legal and that I can literally write my own highschool transcripts and diploma!! I need to do a bit more digging to find out what the requirements are for foreign educated students to enter United States universities, outside of the homeschooling world… but I trully believe that this attribute is not going to be a sticking point for us.

If you are interested, the American High School Diploma is a dual degree program for students at school schools in Spain. Is it something they can sign up for if they are outside of a school that has a relationship with the program? I do not know. There is more to learn about it from my perspective.

It begins in the second year of secondary school (ESO 2) and goes through the first year of bachillerato (11th grade equivalent). A certain english level is required and is probably tested for, since the program is in english. It is advertised as a way to “open the door” to American Universities.

Aside from the laptop situation, I was very taken aback that this school was not accessible in any way. When I questioned the host about accessibility he said “we are healthy here”. That definitely rubbed me the wrong way. I told him that accessibility is important.. Like the previous concertado, this was another one that said that all of the kids went to the catholic class, and that none of them really did valores. Because of these two issues, plus the computer thing, I don’t think this school would be as diverse as I would like. I don’t want my kids going to school where everyone has to be able bodied, because they literally can not access the school otherwise. This is a big sad face issue for me.

Our current ranking is:

#5. school 1 (public)

#6. school 2 (concertado; one of the schools recommended by my son’s current teacher)

#7. school 3 (concertado; non-accessible & computer heavy school)

1-4 are unknown at the moment, but that will change, and these three schools could end up at the top of the list. Who knows!!?

School 4: Concertado

Since the third school visit, I have felt very discouraged. At that open house, I spoke to a woman who currently has her son in our next school to visit. She was there are school 3 visiting it, because she wants to remove her son from school 3 due to the computer usage. She says that he has lost a lot of his great handwriting! This knowledge was a huge bummer for me, but it also shows how it is important to talk to as many people as possible, to get as much information as possible about these schools.

Over the two week window between school 3 and 4, I realized that I needed to add two more schools to my list. I was at 7, but now with two of these schools being “computer schools” (I like to give things nicknames), I knew that I ultimately did not want them on my list AT ALL. The problem, is that I need 7 schools on my list. I don’t want to leave anything up to chance by either keeping them as 6 and 7, or just leaving those two spots blank, and RISKING the state giving my son some wide assignment, in the small chance that they had to go down to the 6th or 7th choice for him.

So I searched “IES” near my home, and came up with two more public schools near me. Neither of them seem to be within the 1 km radius, but they will have to do for now. I added them to my list after researching their websites. One of them had an open house already posted to their website for March, so I added it to the agenda. The other….well, I am afraid that they had their open house in January, though I am hoping they will add a second open house for April (fingers crossed).

So here is how it went today at school number 4. This school has a lot going for it, set aside the lap top issue. They have bachillareto, formacion (trade or vocational school), and a lot of extracurricular activities at the school. The host kept saying that school is more than just academics. I agree with him. I am looking for a school that also contains a strong sense of community, and I think that having a lot of activities to get involved with at the school is a major component of that happening. Thus far, I haven’t been too impressed with this aspect of the first 2 concertados that we went to see, so I was glad to see this was happening here.

There were about 100 people at this open house. That is a huge number compared to the last places we have visited. There were probably 100 people at the public school we went to, but it’s a public school, so it’s expected.

At this school, I learned that French is mandatory in Aragon for the first level of ESO and possibly the second.

I also had another encountered with one thing being advertised on a website, but reality being different. The german and Chinese classes that are listed on their website, are not actually active currently, and don’t seem to have been active for awhile now.

They shared with us their numbers from last year. They had 5 spots for “regular” admission open and zero ACNEAE spots. They received 25 applications for those 5 spots. They admitted 5. As of December 2025, their enrollment for ESO 1 was 55 students. This means those 5 students were the “new kids” and that 50 were not. This is a negative point about starting ESO (middle school) in a concertado. The students who are there have already been there for years most likely, whereas if you start ESO at an “instituto” (public school), you are just one out of everyone who is knew to the first year- I don’t if I am way off here, but I like this better.

When it comes to the topic of religion, they told us that they do have some students who do not practice catholicism and instead take the Values class (Valores). This tells me that the school has more diversity. The way they organized this class though was a little bit odd. Essentially, everyone was in the same class, but the students are split up between Catholic class and Values class. The 6 or so Values class students are moved away from the Catholic class students, and given their own teacher. All of the students stay in the same classroom, so the exposure to the lessons still exist… this is something for you to consider, when it comes to HOW you frame your questions at Catholic Concertados, if it matters to you. From now on, I won’t simply ask IF they have a Values class with students in it, but also whether or not the students are actually in their OWN classroom.

As I mentioned, the school was super organized and “nice” (snack bar, bilingual signs, well organized, bright, clean, lots of recreo space, a nice cafeteria, etc), BUT I can not get lost in appearances. I must stay on track with the top criteria that we are looking for, so this school is going to get shot down to the bottom of the list. It comes with a high competition for entry, so even if it was number 1, there would be little chance that my son would get in. Add in that I don’t like the computers, and that it is not in our preferred location (in route to the school my youngest will be in), and it’s just not a priority school for us.

Our current ranking is:

#4. school 1 (public) 13 point school

#5. school 2 (concertado; one of the schools recommended by my son’s current teacher) 13 point school

#6. school 3 (concertado; non-accessible & computer heavy school) 13 point school

#7. school 4 (concertado; wrong area, heavy on computers) 13 point school

1-3 are unknown at the moment, but that will change, and these four schools could end up at the top of the list. Who knows!!?

At the moment, we have four open houses scheduled for March, after the puente (cinco de marzado). I am HOPING some more pop up for the month from my list. My list is now “numbered” A-L. OH YEA, another thing. One of the schools that my son’s current teacher recommended to us, is not having an open house for ESO. Why not?? Because they don’t plan to have *any* spots open for ESO, so why waste their time…. oh me. So that school is off the list for now… so make that A-K schools, which I think is now 11 schools in total, with four having been visited, 4 more on the calendar, and three to figure out how/went to see.

Check back for more at that time!

Here is a video of our January/February Visits. I discuss the visits in a different way, and talk some about my considerations about schools, boundaries, and the overall process.

March Visits:

School #5: Concertado

This school is going to be another example of how no two schools are the same. To the local, my school visiting obsession seems excessive, the the foreigner, it seems appropriate. Here’s why: What I thinking I am figuring out is that when you grow up in a certain neighborhood in Zaragoza, you just go to the school that you already know. It might be your family school- the school your parents, your aunts, uncles, cousins, and siblings all go to- so guess what? When it’s time to choose a school for your own kids, you just automatically go there, and you keep your kids there for all of their schools years. Of course, this can not be done in the public system, as well in the concertado system. However, still- a family who prefers public will order their list in a way that starts with the public school closest to them, and expand from there. The won’t even consider concertados at all. This is my take, maybe I am wrong- but for now, that is how I see it based on the comments I see online, messages I received from locals, and my overall experience with this process.

Now, back to today’s school. School number 5. First of all, let me up date you on a couple of things.

1. I found out that I only need 6 schools. That takes a bit of pressure off, a bit
2. I had a revelation. I should only focus on 14 point schools. That is where we will be the most competitive. I will explain more later.

So on to our first 14 point school. Fourteen points is the max number of points that our family can accumulate at this time. This was a concertado, with a schedule of about 8-2pm. They have two breaks for secondary, including a recess time and a snack time. They don’t go outside for snack-bathroom break time, but they do for recess (recreo). They wear uniforms for the first two years of ESO, but not the 3rd and 4th year. They use ipads for textbooks, which parents have to purchase for around 1000 euros each. These ipads are sent off to be secured and “locked down” with parental controls. The camera is not accessible. Apps are given hours of use. Although we do not like the ipad/computer for books and school work, we do prefer the iPAD over the chromebooks. They work better, and they are more secure. They also are not leaning towards completing work on the ipad, but more so just using them for the textbooks throughout their secondary career. When the kids get a computer at school, the automatically are going to be more likely to require work to be typed and completed on the computer, instead of writing it out.

They have school mass and an amazing school cathedral. Religion class is optional, and they do have a few kids from each grade level who go into an alternative class, completely separated from the religious class. This is something that is different from the other concertados that we have been to. She said they have 4-5 kids from each grade level who do not take the religion class. This is better than zero. She also said that during mass, the students who do not “want” to go, can go into a different class and do some other activity- like homework, or study, etc.

Mid- March Update: This is the school that told (after I asked), that they expected the schooling process (escolarizacion) to be between semana santa and the "april puente". 

On March 16, it was announced that the process was starting April 16 and ending on April 22. For context, we have our tentative list ready by now, but still have 3 more puertas abiertas to attend before semana santa. The vacancies list is not out (yet). 

They bring in extra teachers for math and lengua (the equivalent of Language Arts or Grammer, except in Castellano), which is a huge thing for me. So far, the teacher/student ratio has been pretty much 1:25 at every school. At this school, for 2 of the 4 hours per week for these two subjects, the school offers extra help DURING CLASS hours for those who need it. This is fantastic, especially for foreign students who struggle with lengua.. a difficult subject even for Spanish.

This school has extracurriculars for secondary, including football sala (indoor soccer) and basketball, with competitive teams who play against other schools on the weekends- again, something I like and am looking for. They also have a technology after school group, as well as music offerings to learn an instrument.

They do not have german and they use the tech for books, those are the two negatives. I would also prefer a school with a start time AFTER 8am to allow for more morning sleep.

The positives are that the ipad use seems controlled in a sense, the lady who did our tour represented the school well, and it seems they really care about the individual child’s needs- and I liked that a lot. This school is well talked about in the facebook groups here. They have the sports, lunch for secondary (not all schools do) and it’s walking distance to our home. So, without further ado, this school is going to be listed as number 1 on our list.

Current ranking

1. Today’s school, School Visit #5 a concertado. A 14 point school.

2. A public school that we may not get to visit (yikes). A 14 point school.

3. A public school that we may not get to visit (yikes again) or a concertado (tomorrow’s visit). A 14 point school.

4. One of the above will be 3 and the other 4. A 14 point school.

5. A public school, the first school we visited. A 13 point school.

6. Concertado- second school we visited. A 13 point school.

Are you feeling like this yet?

School #6: Concertado

It’s the next day from the last school that we visited. Today’s school was a 14 point school according the the school application forms. It’s a school that many older people here have told us is really good. They wear uniforms, have some extracurriculars for secondary, and use ipads for textbooks, but do their writing on paper.

I have to say that this was the worst experience yet at an open house. It felt very stuffy, fake, overly structured, and inflexible. All things that I am not looking for in a school. There were a few things that happened that hyped my spidey sense from the moment we walked in the door, but our first “classroom” visit was the point where I was already ready to leave! One question we always ask schools is about how their alternative to religion class is organized. The guy said a few things: only 2-3 students in all of ESO don’t go to the religion class, they can’t afford an actual class for the students who don’t go, so they just do whatever, and that we could talk to our son and maybe starting doing catholicism through the school… like what the actual heck!? At that point, I was ready to leave. He scoffed while answering the question about how do they have a class for just 2-3 kids (all at different levels of ESO, so it doesn’t make sense), and again when he did not like how I asked him if he had a level of english. LOL. Let me clarify that it was not the question itself, but that he scoffed in a way to insult my use spanish and the way that I had asked the question. He then shuffled us out, and started talking about my question to the next group. RUDE.

My son noticed that two of the teachers, while answering a general question from a parent in one of the classrooms, volunteered some information about how the study body welcomes new students. They meant it to be a positive exchange. The problem was that they could not remember how many new kids they had received THIS school year. Was it 2? was it 3? They chatted between themselves, and then dismissed the fact that they couldn’t remember, and insinuated that it didn’t matter. He noted this as a reflexion of the limited amount of care and knowledge that they have for their students. At this point, HE was ready to leave.

There were multiple times where we tried to ask questions, but were told to essentially wait, because this wasn’t the “room” for that topic and that it would be discussed later. I loathe that attitude from teachers in schools, so if they are doing that to us at puertas abiertas- a time when they are supposed to be putting their BEST foot forward, then I can not imagine what life in the actual school is like to students who have “somewhat off topic, but still very relevant” questions.

I often bring up the english topic, just to see how schools, teachers, admin will respond to me speaking english. I do speak some spanish, and I manage most school conversations in spanish fairly well (not easily, but I manage them and accomplish them in a positive way without help). I am the main person in my family who deals with school issues and talks to teachers, so if a teacher or admin responds in “panic” when they hear me speak english to them, that is a red flag for me. If they can not “handle” me at open house, then I can’t imagine how difficult things would be during the course of an academic year, and further on. This school advertises themselves as having a high focus on english, so I was expecting to hear that a lot of the teachers spoke english, but what we were met with was the realization that only the english teachers teach english. This is fairly typical, but after the open house yesterday, where we were told that all of the teachers have at least a B2 level of english- now I feel that I can raise the bar on that topic, possibly to my own disappointment. haha

Here are some basic facts about the school:

• they have lengua and math help for 2 out of 4 hours of the class week for those two classes
• eso 1 has biology in english
• eso 2 has plastica in english
• eso 3 has tech in english
• school day is 8:30am to 2:30pm.

This will be the first school that I say this about: this school is coming off the list. I can’t even fathom my son going to this school at all. It can’t even hold a last place spot. It just has to GO. The basic facts are all positive, but the bottom line is that this why we visit so many schools- to get a “vibe” of how they are run, because we are looking for something like what we have now for primary, and we know it will not be able to find, but this was not it. There is more to school than languages, extracurriculars, school hours, and proximity. Those things are all important, but an in-person visit is as necessary for school as it is for renting a home in Spain!!

We currently have 2 more open houses this week, for a total of 4 more before Semana Santa- meaning a grand total of 6 for the month of March (so far), or 10 in total since January. I will update on our next open house when it happens in a couple of days. I am feeling optimistic about it. I already have a friend who visited the school and said positive things. We’ve been there as well to ask for an appointment to visit the school, and got a good first impression when we did that.

School #7: Concertado

I liked this school a lot! Firstly, we were able to walk right in and ask about an appoint to visit the school. The called us shortly thereafter and scheduled it. This was from Monday to Thursday. Monday, walk in and appointment made for Thursday.

We walked into a welcome, non-staged environment. We sat in a room with an oval shaped table, with a window overlooking the patio. On the patio, were secondary students having their recess time (recreo). This gave me a chance to observe the group dynamics. What were they doing? How were they acting towards one another? There are various groups doing different things: playing football, basketball, and just socializing. There was no fighting or other weird things going on in the corners :). I was also able to get a good look at their uniforms: slacks, hoodie, polo shirt, track suit. Usually, tracksuits (chandal) are work on PE days, so that tells me that there were some kids who were having PE that day, but not all.

Come to find out, there are two groups of kids in each grade. We were there with one other parent, so while it wasn’t an advertised open house, but a more private one, there was only one other family represented there. We went into a classroom, where the jefa de estudios (similar to an assistant principal) gave her little presentation of the school, and gave us lots of time to ask all of our questions. After visiting school #6, we had new questions and topics to consider, and this school met all of them very well. They offer the extra help for math and lengua, which I have since come to believe is standard, but I wonder how it literally plays out in real life? We shall see down the road.

They do not have comedor for ESO, nor do they have sports. They might have balonmano (handball), depending on the demand. The school is small, with only 200 kids in ESO. There is no bachillerato there, but they do have a secured spot at a “sister school”, which is equally as close to our home, but in another direction, and is a point of preference for us. They had the latest hours of any secondary school that we have to at this point. They were 8:45am to 2:45pm. This is actually a little tight for us, with my other child still attending a different school, in a different direction, at 9am. However, they did say that I could bring him a little bit earlier with no issue. The jefa de estudios spoke some english and she told me that most teachers at the school have at least a B1 level of engish, just like the previous school. In many ways, they seemed very similar, except for the lack of extracurriculars and lunch (comedor). For the reason, we made them a #2 or #3 option.

School #8: Concertado

I am a couple of days delayed on writing this, due to the fact that this school visit was on a Saturday morning, which doesn’t give me much free time afterwards to write. I do this stuff on school days ;), while my kids are being occupied by someone else for a few hours.

This was another concertado, and one that we had been to before. Two years ago, we visited this school for their primary puertas abiertas, and it was the first school on our list for our son, at that time. He was going into the 5th grade. The interesting thing about this school is that they are a 14 point school for us, because the department of education uses the “linear distance” to calculate points. Most of the other 14 point schools are 1 km by foot, or less. They are also 1 km or less by car or bus or by bird’s eye. THIS school is 1 km or less by bird’s eye (linear distance), but NOT by car, bus, or foot, which means that even though it’s a 14 point school, it is FURTHER away than any of the other 14 point schools.

If I haven’t already explained what it means to be a 14 point school, I will later, both in a youtube video, and as part of a write up on the step of the process where points are calculated. Stay tuned.

What we liked about the school: it is a 14 point school for us, I like uniforms (my son does not), they are well known in their community, which isn’t really my community, although it’s within the 1km radius of our home. They have an extra early release time of 1:40pm.

What we didn’t like about the school: my son did not like the old building, there was writing (some “graffitti” on the walls), no lunch for secondary, and once again, no extra curricular activities.

When we left this school, we thought it could be a back up school, but not a school that we would list in our top 6, unless we had to.

Introspection

The night of this open house, I couldn’t sleep for thinking about this stuff! I decided it was time to make a spreadsheet. I made two different list. One that was the 6 schools, listed in order, including some we haven’t seen yet, that I thought were going to be “best” for our son.

These were listed in order to providing the most individual care to the child. The ones that I thought looked at the individual, and really showed intention to that when we visited and/or for those we hadn’t yet visited, they have this reputation in the community, based on my research.

My second list was made according the the availability of german as a foreign language, starting with just a “language class” and decreasing in order of “concentration” IE. The first school only has a German class (easier option), the second school 2-3 class IN German, but they are not CORE classes, and the third school had 2-3 classes in German that ARE core classes (more difficult to pass, and more important to pass).

The main difference between these two list was that one was mostly full of schools we had visited (top 3 were anyway), and the other listed had the top three schools has schools we hadn’t yet visited, because they hadn’t had open houses yet. They were also public schools. The other list was concertados. Some of my bottom 3 classes on the german list, were in the top 3 classes of the “my opinion” list. This left me with some uncertainty. There is a big difference between public schools and concertados school, and I felt that since there was no overlap between the two list, in the top three schools, that we really needed to decide if GERMAN was something that should be a priority or not, and also whether public schools were going to be a good fit for us.

One thing that has become important, that we didn’t realize would be, is the prioritization of the lunch and extracurricular offerings at the schools. All of the public schools have these, and only some of the concertados do. This topic had become important to us, after we started to realize that so many schools did not offer these two things. More important than German class, because my son already takes german class online, and can continue to do that, no matter what school he goes to.

So, our list was already being reshaped to prioritize the availability of extracurriculars and lunch. This was not a priority at the start, and this is WHY going to these events is important, although not very fun over time.

Enter CHATGPT

I got the “wild” idea to ask chat GPT what it thought. As I was considering the possibility, I was also very clearly thinking that I could not believe that I was actually thinking about doing this- but do it I must! I had to at least see what it would say, especially because there were schools on my list that we had not visited, and I did not know if we would have the possibility before school applications started.

My method was VERY simple. I just typed in the school name, and hit enter. I did not ask it a question or tell it to do anything for me at all.

It immediately came back with valuable to me information. After the second and third school, it started asking me questions. Did I want it to do this or that? YES, I said, YES!!! Cue even more invaluable information! This thing was doing something that I had not yet considered (remember I have already told you that it is hard to research schools here). It was looking at the schools from the perspective of an auxilliary. THIS WAS GENIUS and it was something that I had not yet considered, and probably never would have!! Eventually, it created this chart for me:

School	Type	Age Range	Classroom Calmness / Ease	Notes
Current School	Private Christian	Infantil & Primaria	⭐⭐⭐⭐ • Very calm	Younger kids; structured routines; easy to manage
School not visited yet	Concertado Catholic	3–18	⭐⭐⭐⭐ • Calm & structured	Clear rules, disciplined, predictable
School #5 Visited	Concertado Catholic	3–18	⭐⭐⭐⭐ • Calm & structured	Similar to Pías; stable classrooms
Colegio Santa Rosa FESD	Concertado Catholic	3–16	⭐⭐⭐⭐ • Calm	Supportive community; predictable behavior
A Previously attended school	Concertado	3–16	⭐⭐⭐ • Generally calm	Community‑oriented; ESO varies
A Previously Attended School	Private Montessori	3–15	⭐⭐⭐ • Calm & engaged	Montessori style; student‑centered
School not visited yet	Public IES	12–18	⭐⭐⭐ • Moderate	Academically focused; mostly cooperative
School #1 Visited	Public IES	12–18	⭐⭐⭐ • Moderate	Balanced classrooms; engaged students
Not visited, not planned, just for comparison	Public IES	12–18	⭐⭐ • Mixed	Typical urban public vibe; varies by class
School not yet visited	Public IES	12–18	⭐⭐ • Lively	Energetic ESO classes can be noisy
School not yet visited, was top of list for german option, now removed	Public IES	12–18	⭐ • Most varied/energetic	Very diverse behavior; requires adaptability

After looking at all of the schools via chat gpt, and seeing it’s analysis from all different angles, and even asking it to analyze schools that I already had personal experience with, to see how accurate it was (one was accurate, one was not), I began to reshape my list. I removed german as a priority from the list. I kept extracurriculars. Distance was still a thing (remember 14 points includes that quality), but one thing was altered- I choose to prioritize concertados, based on chat gpts analysis of classroom managment characteristics. One school, I completely removed from my list…. and it had been number 1!

“Pro tip”, since I’m a pro now: When you use chat gpt, pay attention to the little source that they not. If the only source is the school’s website, then that is a red flag. If there are not a variety of quality sources, then consider that a biased response. Click the link it gives, check it out.. make sure they are quality websites.

My list looks completely different from how it started, way back in January.

Two things are responsible for this:

1. Prioritizing 14 point schools, some of which were added after I did the school point calculations using a map and calculator that is on the department of education website

1. Chat GPT utilizing data from auxiliaries.

Given that we had two current puertas abiertas scheduled for this week, three more scheduled before Semana Santa, and a real possibility of a 4th one, I am happy to say that we pretty much have our list made. That said, we do have 2 schools on the list that we haven’t visited yet. They are both currently scheduled for the same day and time this week, so we have to adjust that and request a reschedule so that we can visit BOTH schools, probably this week, or next.

Here is the current list, without names

1. School Visit #5 (this school was not on my radar in the beginning. It is a school I discovered after it came up on the points calculator, and that I had to double check the hours on, because I had originally thought it was jornada partida (the reason it wasn’t on my original list), but it is continua in secondary.
2. School Visit # 7. Again, a school that I added to my list after double checking hours, because it came up on the calculator. I prioritized visiting it, after a friend visited it and said she liked it a lot.
3. A concertado that we haven’t visited yet
4. Same as above, currently, we need to decide which one is 3 and which is 4
5. School #2: A 13 point school: this was my first backup school, which I am utilizing since I removed all but the “best” public school from my list; it is also a school that chatgpt described in a similar way to the way it described their current school; it is a school recommendation that came from our current school, which is how my school list began; I liked the director and how she interacted with my son- it has stuck with me throughout this process
6. A public school that we haven’t visited yet; the best rated public from my list, according to Chatgpt & the local community

I will continue to update this post, and towards the end of the month of March, I will post a video on youtube with my “before and after” of the schools, along with more candid commentary.

Until then,

Ashley