Schools in Spain: how they work, what they cost and how to enrol your child

A child from a foreign family in Spain gets their main education at a Spanish school: state schools are free, compulsory education runs from 6 to 16, and the language of instruction depends on the region.

Here is how the Spanish school system works, how to enrol, and what to plan before the move.

How Spanish schools work

A child gets their main education in the Spanish system. It is divided into four stages.

Stage	Age	Compulsory
Educación infantil — pre-school	0–6, in two cycles	no, but almost everyone attends the second cycle
Educación primaria — primary	6–12	yes
ESO — compulsory secondary	12–16	yes
Bachillerato or vocational training (FP)	16–18	no

Compulsory education runs from 6 to 16. Children start school in the calendar year they turn six. The school year starts in September and ends in June.

How many years (classes) there are in a Spanish school and what they are called

Year groups are numbered afresh at each stage rather than across the whole school. Under the Education Act (LOE as amended by the LOMLOE):

Stage	Years	Age
Primaria	1º–6º	6–12
ESO	1º–4º	12–16
Bachillerato	1º–2º	usually 16–18

The year group is set by the year of birth, not by the class the child finished at home. This is the first surprise for parents: a child arriving from a country where school starts at seven is often a year “ahead” of the class they were in, because in Spain children start at six. A child born in 2019 will be in 3º de Primaria in the 2027/28 school year; a child born in 2017 will be in 5º. The arithmetic is simple: take the year the school year starts, subtract the year of birth, subtract five — that is the Primaria year group. For 2027/28 and a child born in 2019: 2027 minus 2019 minus 5 equals 3.

There are ten compulsory years in total: six in Primaria and four in ESO. The pre-school stage, Infantil, is optional.

Colegio, escuela, instituto. A state school for Infantil and Primaria is officially called a CEIP — Colegio de Educación Infantil y Primaria, and one for ESO and Bachillerato an IES, Instituto de Educación Secundaria. In everyday speech “colegio” or “cole” means any school, private ones included.

The 2026/2027 school year

The law requires at least 175 school days a year, and each region sets the dates:

Region	Start	End	Christmas holidays
Madrid	Primaria 7 September, ESO 8 September 2026	18 June 2027	23 December – 6 January
Catalonia	8 September 2026	21 June 2027	22 December – 7 January
Valencian Community	9 September 2026	18 June 2027	22 December – 6 January
Andalusia	Primaria 10 September, ESO 15 September 2026	set by each province; in Cádiz 23 June 2027	in Cádiz 23 December – 8 January

Local holidays and days set by the town hall and the school board are added to these dates.

School uniform. There is no nationwide requirement to wear a uniform: neither the Education Act nor school regulations introduce one. Whether to have a uniform is part of each school’s autonomy, as the Madrid regional government stated plainly in reply to an enquiry. Whether a uniform is needed is found in the rules of the specific school when you enrol.

How pupils are graded

In Primaria and ESO, under national rules, grades are given in words and there is no numerical scale (article 26 of RD 157/2022 and article 31 of RD 217/2022):

Grade	Abbreviation	Meaning
Insuficiente	IN	fail
Suficiente	SU	pass
Bien	BI	good
Notable	NT	very good
Sobresaliente	SB	excellent

The ESO certificate is issued without a grade. In Bachillerato grades are numerical, from 0 to 10 with no decimals, and anything below 5 is a fail (article 30 of RD 243/2022). Equivalents such as “Notable means 7–8”, which are often quoted, are left over from earlier rules: the current national rules do not contain them.

Nursery and pre-school: what to do with a child under six

The pre-school stage, Educación infantil, has two cycles and they work differently. The first cycle, from birth to three, is nursery — guardería or escuela infantil. It is not compulsory, state places are fewer than applicants, and they are allocated on the same kind of baremo as school places, weighted by address and family income. Private nurseries exist everywhere and cost noticeably more.

The second cycle, from three to six, is formally optional too, but almost every child attends it, and in state schools it is free: the second-cycle class usually sits inside the very school the child will later start Primaria in. The practical conclusion for a family with a younger child: a place in the second cycle almost always means a place in that school’s primary section, so the nursery application is effectively the school application as well.

Meals, after-school care and the bus are paid separately in every case. Many communities subsidise the first cycle for lower-income families; the amounts and conditions change every year, and you check them at the town hall where you are registered.

Three types of school and what they cost

Type	Funding	Guide cost
Pública — state	fully state-funded	tuition is free; you pay for meals, textbooks, after-school care
Concertada — state-subsidised	a private school with state funding	usually from a few tens to a few hundred euros a month
Privada — private	fully fee-paying	from a few hundred euros to fifteen hundred and more

A separate category is international schools with a British, American or international curriculum. Teaching there is in English and fees are the highest, but moving between countries does not disrupt the curriculum. For families who are not sure they are staying in Spain for good, this is often the more sensible choice.

The key question: what language your child will be taught in

This is something people hardly think about before moving, and it shapes the choice of city more than housing costs do.

Besides Spanish, Spain has regional official languages, and in a number of autonomous communities teaching is mainly in those languages.

Region	Language of instruction in state schools
Madrid, Andalusia, Murcia, Castile, the Canary Islands	Spanish
Catalonia	mainly Catalan
Valencian Community	Spanish and Valencian, the proportion depends on the school and programme
The Balearic Islands	mainly Catalan
Basque Country	language models with different shares of Basque (Euskera)
Galicia	Spanish and Galician

The practical conclusion: a child moving to Barcelona learns two new languages at once — Catalan as the language of lessons and Spanish as the language of the street. In Valencia the situation is milder and depends on the particular school. In Madrid, Alicante or Málaga there is one language.

For younger pupils this is usually not a problem: children under 8–9 catch up within a year. For a teenager who moves at 14 and goes straight into ESO in Catalan, the difference is fundamental — and it is an argument when choosing a region. If your child plays football seriously, factor in the federation rules for foreign players when choosing a school and a city — they are explained in our guide to football academies in Spain.

How to enrol your child in school

All minors in Spain have the right to education, regardless of the family’s immigration status. Not having a residence permit is not grounds for refusing admission — this is expressly set out in law.

The general procedure:

1. Complete municipal registration (empadronamiento) at your home address. Your address determines which school catchment area you belong to and how many points you get in the allocation.
2. Wait for the single application window. There is one window for the whole intake and it usually opens in March, in the Valencian Community in May: Catalonia calls the procedure preinscripció, Madrid proceso de admisión, Andalusia escolarización. The exact dates are announced each year by the autonomous community, and the lists of admitted pupils are published in June — in Catalonia, for the 2026/27 year, they came out on 10 June. You apply in that window even if you have not moved yet: the application goes in before the move, not after.
3. Submit an application with a ranked list of schools. Places are allocated on a points scale called the baremo. The priority criteria are set by article 84.2 of the Education Act (LOE): siblings already at the school, proximity of the school to the home or to the workplace of one of the parents, and family income; special categories come after that. How many points each criterion gives is decided by the region.
4. Gather the documents: birth certificate with a translation and, as a rule, an apostille, passports, proof of municipal registration, vaccination record, the child’s health card.
5. Arrange additional services: meals, school bus, after-school care — these are paid separately and booked in advance.

If you arrive in the middle of the school year, the child must still be placed in a school outside the general process. This is called matrícula viva, and the difference from the ordinary window is fundamental: the place is assigned by the municipal service from whatever is free, and there is no choice of school left.

Hence the order that turns the usual plan upside down: first the district, then the school, and only then the move. Because the points are counted from your address, the tenancy agreement and the municipal registration have to exist before you apply, not after you arrive. Families usually think they are choosing a school; in fact they choose a district first, and the baremo chooses the school.

How many points each criterion gives: four regions

The scale is set by the region, and the differences are large. Below: state and concertada schools, second-cycle infant school, primary and ESO, school year 2026/27.

For a well-off family the income points are practically out of reach: in Madrid and Catalonia they go only to benefit recipients, in Andalusia and Valencia only below two IPREM per person. What decides is the address, a sibling at the school and large-family status. In Madrid the whole municipality is one zone, so within the city the address barely matters and you can choose the school freely; in Andalusia and Catalonia each school has its own catchment area, worth checking before you rent.

A sibling at the school is the strongest criterion

In all four regions a child whose brother or sister already attends the school gets more points than for living nearby, and in Catalonia almost twice as many. Hence the practical rule: if you have several children, apply for all of them to the same school. In Andalusia admitting one to the same year group means admitting all; in Valencia, in the first year in the region, an admitted child gives the others 15 points each; in Madrid the others get sibling points. If it does not work at once, take any free place and apply for the younger child to the older one’s school in the next main round. Note that in Catalonia the sibling criterion does not apply to nursery admission (ages 0–3).

Which year group your child will join

The year group is set by year of birth, not date of birth: children start the first year of primary school in the calendar year in which they turn six (RD 157/2022, art. 5.2). For 2026/27 that means children born in 2020, and for the first year of infant school (age 3) children born in 2023. A child from abroad who is behind can be placed one year lower: in primary, if a full cycle behind; in ESO, if two years behind (LOE, art. 78.2); once they catch up, they move to the year group for their age.

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How to choose a district around a school

This follows from the baremo, and parents rarely get there on their own: if the points are counted from the distance between home and school, choosing a district is choosing a school. You look at schools first and then look for housing inside their catchment, not the other way round.

In practice:

1. Find the schools. Every community runs its own school finder with a map and the data for each school: the language of teaching, the type, the number of places. Catalonia has the Generalitat’s school map, Madrid its regional education portal.
2. Check the catchment. Catchments are drawn by distance rather than by street: each school has its own radius, and one address can fall inside several catchments. That is what to check before signing a tenancy agreement.
3. Look at last year’s demand. Communities publish how many applications each school received and the score of the last pupil admitted. That is more honest than any ranking: you can see whether you will have to fight for a place.
4. Go to an open day. They are held in winter, before applications: February and early March. By then the address has to be settled.

The mistake that costs a year: renting a flat because you liked the neighbourhood and only then discovering that its catchment has no school with the right language or no free places. You can move within a city, but the points are counted on the application date, not on the date you move.

What to do if your child does not speak the language

Schools run language support programmes for newly arrived pupils, and every autonomous community has its own name for them: in Catalonia it is the aula d’acollida, in Andalusia ATAL, aula temporal de adaptación lingüística, elsewhere something else again. Ask at the school using the local term — otherwise you will be told there is no such programme. The child attends an ordinary class, and some lessons are replaced by intensive language learning.

Experience shows that in primary school adaptation takes from a few months to a year; in secondary school it takes longer and requires support at home. A Spanish tutor in the first year pays off better than a private school.

A foreign school certificate and what to do with it

If your child has completed part of their schooling abroad, the documents need to be legalised: an apostille and sworn translation, followed by a recognition procedure (homologación or convalidación) through the Spanish Ministry of Education.

A foreign school-leaving certificate is not enough to enter a Spanish university — you will need recognition and entrance exams. This is worth planning a year before finishing school, not afterwards.

Our overview of Spanish universities covers where to study after school: a list by city, the cost of a year and how to apply.

On higher education and the student visa, see our articles on studying in Spain and the student visa.

What comes after school — vocational training with its three levels and university admission — is covered in our article on studying in Spain.

Four mistakes parents make

• Not checking the region’s language. Moving to Catalonia with a teenager without preparation is the most common source of problems.
• Missing the application period. It takes place in spring; late applicants get whatever places are left.
• Putting off municipal registration. Without it you have no catchment area and no points in the allocation.
• Delaying the apostille and translation. Documents from abroad take a long time, and you need them at the application stage.

Frequently asked questions

Can I send my child to a Spanish school without a residence permit?

Yes. All minors have the right to education regardless of the family’s immigration status.

How much does school cost in Spain?

State schools are free; you only pay for meals, textbooks and after-school care. State-subsidised schools usually cost from a few tens to a few hundred euros a month. Private and international schools are considerably more expensive.

At what age do children start school in Spain?

At six — in the calendar year the child turns six. Before that, pre-school is available from age three, and nurseries from birth.

Until what age do children stay in school in Spain?

Compulsory education lasts until 16. After that it is optional: bachillerato or vocational training until 18.

How many years of school are there in Spain?

Six years of primary school (1º–6º Primaria) and four years of ESO (1º–4º) — ten years of compulsory education in total, plus two years of bachillerato for those going to university.

When does the school year start in Spain?

In September, with the dates set by each region: in 2026, 7–8 September in Madrid, the 8th in Catalonia, the 9th in the Valencian Community and 10–15 September in Andalusia. Classes end in the second half of June.

Is a school uniform required in Spain?

There is no nationwide requirement. A uniform is introduced by the school itself in its own rules, so check this when you enrol.

What language are Spanish schools taught in?

In most regions, Spanish. In Catalonia and the Balearic Islands mainly in Catalan, in the Valencian Community in Spanish and Valencian, and the Basque Country and Galicia have their own models.

What if my child does not speak Spanish?

Schools run language adaptation programmes for newcomers. In primary school children usually catch up within a few months; teenagers need extra support.

Is a foreign school-leaving certificate recognised in Spain?

Yes, after a recognition procedure through the Ministry of Education. To enter university, entrance exams must also be taken.

How do you get into the school you want in Spain?

Places are allocated on the region’s points scale. The strongest criteria are a sibling already at the school and a home in its catchment area: in Catalonia a sibling gives 50 points and a home in the area 30, in Madrid 15 and 12. That is why you register your address before applying and apply for all your children to the same school.

School in Spain: the essentials

• A child gets their main education at a Spanish school, which is free in the state sector.
• Compulsory schooling runs from 6 to 16.
• The language of instruction depends on the region — a key factor when choosing a city.
• The right to school applies regardless of the family’s immigration status.
• Applications are made in spring, and everything depends on municipal registration.

If you are planning a move with children and choosing a region, weigh the school language alongside income and housing. We will look at your situation and find the right ground for a residence permit for the whole family: get in touch.