Here it goes, my biggest personal regret regarding our move to Spain- take a deep breath, because it’s going to be big one:
Not putting our school-aged child into a Spanish school straight from the start!
Wow! That was tough….& it’s been an intense, emotional journey to get to where I am today. I have mentioned before in my previous education post, that we were home educators. My history with educating my children started when my oldest was born and continues until today. He was home educated, within community, in the United States and in Mexico. In these two countries, it is legal to homeschool and there are local communities centered around homeschooling. There is no risk of social services or the government trying to stop you.
In 2021, we decided to move to Spain. I knew when we got here that homeschooling was supposedly considered illegal. I also knew the arguments for why it was more likely a-legal, rather than strictly illegal, because I had joined a group before we moved called ALE: Asociación por la Libre Education. I moved hoping that we could find a way around the requirement… I was hoping we could renew our visa without having to follow this specific rule (the one about school registration being required).
Here is a timeline with some relevant details about how the process went:
April 2021: We moved to Spain.
Since it was nearly the end of the school year, we figured we could stay under the radar. We weren’t too sure about getting the padron done, as we had heard that you have to fill the form in as to which school your 6-16 year old child is registered at. As it turns out, the form DID have a spot for this information. We went ahead and left it blank, then we signed the paperwork to have “someone else represent us”. In other words, we sent my husband alone to do the empadronamiento. We figured we would have better luck not being questioned about our children being in school, if they weren’t there. My husband was able to do the padron with no problems, no questions, etc. First hurdle was done and over with. We had the padron, and no kids in school. :).
September 2021: Since we were on the NLV (the Non-Lucrative Visa),
we knew that we would have to renew our visa at the 1 year mark. Utilizing the renewal window to our benefit, we had considered the option to wait the 90 days after our renewal date, rather than renewing “early” at the 60 days before-our-renewal-date-mark. Theoretically, this meant that we could start our renewal in mid-February, or WAIT until mid-July- otherwise known as SUMMER, when kids aren’t in school. How could they ask for a registration form from a school, if it was summer?
Here is a video I made about our experience with Spanish education at that time.
But here’s the thing, we had to keep our short-term goals in mind while doing this. The biggest of which was for my husband to apply for citizenship in Spain at the two year mark. Because of this goal, we weren’t comfortable letting our visa technically expire before we actually renewed it, all because of school enrollment (???). Believe me when I tell you this, it was incredibly stressful. I absolutely hated the loss of liberty to educate my children HOW I wanted to!! But, we had to put the first things first, so we enrolled our son in a private montessori school. Because they were a private school, they accepted our request to pick him up early from school, so he went every day, from about 9 to 12:30pm.
Fast forward 8 weeks later, and we were leaving the school. It had been two months of a nightmare that I do not wish to repeat. We thought that we could put him in this school, which claimed to be bilingual and “American” and that it would not only ease the transition of schooling for him, but also help with the language acquisition. In fact, the school was full of bullies and teachers who did not know how to manage the classroom environment. As a result we pulled him out of school, went on a trip out of the country, and ultimately moved to another city.
December 2021:
While it was not in our plans to move 8 months after we had just moved to city number 1, we felt we had no choice. I was still DEAD SET against him going to school all day in a traditional setting, and I was still convinced that I would finagle the situation to suit us, for visa purposes.
We moved to city number 2, and let him go to the new school for about one week before Christmas break, and then he returned back to the school after Christmas break as well. Once again, this was a non-traditional school, which was registered with the autonomous region, and allowed us to have flexible attendance. He only went 1-2 times per week. He had fun when he went, and then I still homeschooled him on the other days of the week…but he wasn’t learning anything there. It was essentially glorified babysitting. He also wasn’t learning Spanish, much less math or literature. Remember please that in Spain in December 2021, we were still under some pandemic restrictions, wearing mask etc, so it was very stressful, and also difficult to find community within all of the barriers that existed to human contact.
Here is a video I made about what was going on at around that time.
February 2022: We renewed our visa
using documentation from the school, with no issues. It was a simple one page, stamped by them document with his basic information on it.
June 2022: He attended this democratic school through June 2022.
Once July rolled around, the school had lost their registration. At this point, there was no more benefit to him attending there (for us). In order to renew a visa, you have to be in a registered school. Because we were in a lease, did not really want to move (again), and the school had INSISTED they would get their registration back, we decided to stick around for the summer, and he attended the school once again from September 2022 to December 2022. At this point, they had not had their registration reinstated. We also had our renewed visa in hand, and it was now good for two years…so we had until April 2024 to figure things out as far as his education went. As long as we stayed under the radar from nosey neighbors, we figured we would be okay.
December 2022: We withdrew him from the school, &
decided to move to city number 3 so that we could hide better in a larger city. Step one was to withdrawal him, and once again, to leave the country. We listed this as our reason for withdrawal, knowing they would not report us if we had documentation that this was why we were leaving. Private schools do not have the same regulations as public schools do, and this is one big reason to not put your kids “in the system”, unless you are confident in what you are doing. This was our same method with school number 1, if you go back and look- we left the country then too.
January 2023: We left the country
and then returned back to Spain to move to city number 3. We moved to city number 3, and he finished (with me) his third grade year using the curriculum we had always used, which was whatever I thought was best to use…which is the great thing about home education, am I right?! (I am)
March 2023: He finished “third grade” with me,
we had traveled a bit out of the country just for fun 🙂 & he came back showing interest in school. He wanted some community, a sense of roots. It is very difficult in Spain to find friend groups outside of school. Everywhere you go people will ask you what school your kids go to… we got asked this very often from January to March in our new city. It was very stressful for our son, as we had just told him to say that he went to a school far away, and didn’t know the name of it. This was true, since I document everything through an umbrella school in the USA, so it was far away, and he didn’t know the name of it. Either way, it was very stressful for him to be in this position. In March, since he had finished third grade with me, and I knew that in one year we would need to renew our visas once again, I offered him the option to enroll in a traditional school. We decided that after two failed democratic school attempts, that we should go the other way and choose a more traditional option, knowing this would come with full class days and uniforms.
He was onboard, so we visited some schools, and ended up choosing a private english (British) school, which had a school day from 9-3:45pm. We had to take the bus to get there, and it was definitely a whole situation and very tiring to maintain. We were surrounded by local schools, but we were taking the bus to this specific school- the reason was that the day was the shortest day that we could find in this city, where most schools went until 5pm (or later!!). Coming from home education, I was just not on board with this mentality of being in school literally all day long. I also 100% did not love the 9 to almost 4pm class day either.
Without going into all of the extensive detail of his adaptation and transition into traditional schooling, I will just say that it was overall a positive experience. In the end, he finished the school year there, and continued with them the following September.
September 2023:
Towards mid-September we realized our second child was interested in going to school, but he was only 3 and there was no way that I was going to send him to this school that was not walking distance from our house! I did not want him to go to school, but since he was seeing his older brother go, he also wanted to go. Three years old in Spain is not in the compulsory age group, so I knew that he could go to school with more freedom of attendance than our oldest son could. As such, we visited all of the schools that were within a 10 minute walk of us.
We found a local school that suited us, and signed him up. This was a school with a split class day (more on that here), meaning the kids had lunch in the middle of the day, and then returned to classes. This also means they could go home. Because of this, we would being our 3 year old home, but not return him for the second part of the day. We also did not take him every day. We used this time with him there to get to know the school well enough to decide that we felt comfortable with our oldest son going there.
Here is the thing: it was a concertado, that means it was a partially publicly funded school. This also means that if my oldest had extensive absenteeism or if we just randomly pulled him out of the school, they would be required to report us. Because of this, we had to be very sure about what we were doing, and also had to be aware that it might not work out, and if it didn’t…then we needed a plan to get out of dodge to avoid a social services visit. Yes, this is real life in Spain.
October 2023: We switched our oldest from the private school to the concertado
that his brother was going to. Up to now, his spanish had not increased, and he was still not in “community” with other people. Since he was at a private school, the students lived all over the place, which means they were not our neighbors. This is an important point when it comes to choosing a school in Spain.
At the concertado, our oldest son’s spanish BLOSSOMED. I will not pretend even for a second that it was an easy transition. IT WAS NOT. It was HARD. It was hard socially and academically, however the hard stuff paid off. He got through it. He passed his classes, he finished the first term, and he finished the second term.. & then we moved…AGAIN.
April 2024: At the concertado, we had extensive trouble with our youngest son’s teacher.
Alas, this is how it is with families, right? Everyone matters…what is working for one kid, may not be working for the other one. I was not willing to give into her aggressive pressure for more intensive attendance of my youngest child, who legally did not have to be at school anyway! My oldest son was also struggling severely with the split class day. He did not want to stay all day, nor did we want him to, but he also did not want to go back after he had come home for his two hour lunch break! Additionally, the school was very religious, and as time went on, we all became very uncomfortable with it. {Of note, we had also completed our second and final NLV renewal by this time}.
We chose to move back to city number 1, just after we had family visit. This brought us back to Zaragoza, Spain. It was essentially around a break from school.
Upon moving back to Zaragoza, we immediately went to the education center to register our oldest for school. I can not go into the process that is involved with that in this post, but I do briefly discuss it (HERE). Essentially, because they were in the process of taking applications for the NEXT school year, they had the current school year’s enrollment SHUT DOWN. What this meant was that we could not enroll our kid in school. HOW IRONIC! We were literally told by officials to home educate him until September- to not even bother trying to enroll him when they reopened the process, because it would be too short of a time to be in school.
May 2024: Enrollment for the current school year re-opened at the end of May.
Because my son wanted to, we filled out the application to ask for a place in a school through the end of the year on the day that enrollment opened back up. It took them a couple of weeks to get back to us. By the time we had completed the process, there were only two weeks of school left- but he did not care. He wanted to go to school to have something to do and to be around other kids :). He had generally had a good experience at his previous school, and he wanted to “do that” again.
June 2024: He gets a spot at a local public school.
It was not the closest school, but it was accessible. It took about 15 minutes to get there on the bus. Since it was June, the hours were only 9-1pm, so he was basically there having fun, getting to know people, playing outside, and enjoying his last two weeks of the school year. This was his first time at a purely public school. There were no uniforms, or anything like that. It was a school with a good reputation. He made friends right away. WHY was it so easy this time?! Because he was fairly fluent in Spanish!! 🙂 He had learned so much at the previous concertado. Switching him to that school back in October was the absolute right thing to do. It was also a very hard thing to do, but it was well worth it to see him thriving in this new environment.
September 2024: This brings me to today.
As I am writing this, it is the Friday before school starts. Both of our kids are enrolled in a concertado that has a short class day. They will go from 9-2pm. This is hours shorter than the previous schools. Many of the schools in Aragon offer additional foreign language classes, which was/is important to us, since our kids are already fluent in english, have learned spanish through school, and need a 3rd language to be learning, ie their “second language”.
Now for my biggest regret when it comes to our initial move to Spain.
Looking back and reviewing all of the different struggles, and then seeing now how things have smoothed out so much, simply because he knows spanish now, has made me realize that we should have enrolled him in a spanish school straight from the start, so why didn’t we?
There are multiple reasons. I have already mentioned that I was committed to home schooling. The other reason is that we did not know how the system worked here. We were totally overwhelmed with all of the newness, and like other parents, we felt it would be an easier transition for our kids if we put them into english schools, to ease into things. Although we did this with the best intentions, I can look back and say that this choice actually caused more complications and prolonged the adjustment for both of our kids, which was the opposite of what was intended.
In the spanish school, our son flourished. He not only learned the language, but he learned the spanish culture, he made friends, he got to play with other kids every single day, he learned about school customs, he played on a sports team, he scored his first futbol goal, he got to see what it felt like to be included in a solid group of boys who were working together for one common goal. He was sad to leave that school, but I believe he will also thrive where we are now- he will thrive in all the same ways, except now he will do it with a 3rd language and a shorter class day :). He will also do it with a sense of confidence, because it is seen as a cool thing to be the kid who speaks spanish and english at school ;). There are not too many of them in the primary years who are fluent in both languages. It is a definite strength, and I am so glad he has this skill now.
I sincerely hope that this post has helped to clear your mind, to allow you to see that there is a place for education in Spain, and that spanish education is actually beneficial to the kids in many ways, but especially to foreign kids. Rather than say “we want to ease them into the Spanish language and culture by using private English schools”, let’s say “we will put them in Spanish schools, get the language, adapt, & THEN decide if we want to go back to that English private” (expensive school). I don’t think you will ;).
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