Most families arrive assuming a school place works the way it does at home: you find a school you like, you call them, you put your child on a list. In Spain, for the two kinds of school most families end up choosing between, none of those three steps is what decides the outcome.
The four kinds of school
Before anything else, it helps to know which of these you are actually applying to, because the rules differ.
- State (pública) — free, run by the regional education authority, taught in Spanish. Places allocated by points.
- Concerted (concertada) — privately run, state-funded, usually with a small monthly contribution and often a religious foundation behind it. Taught in Spanish. Places allocated by the same points system as state schools.
- Private (privada) — fee-paying, sets its own admissions. Taught in Spanish, sometimes bilingual.
- International — fee-paying, follows a British, American or IB curriculum, teaches largely in English. Sets its own admissions and usually has its own waiting list.
If you are looking at state or concerted schools, you are in the points system. If you are looking at private or international schools, you are dealing directly with the school and the timing is theirs, not the region's.
The baremo: how points work
For state and concerted schools, applications are scored on a published scale called the baremo. The exact weightings are set by the region and can change, but the categories are consistent, and two of them matter far more than the rest:
- Catchment — where you are registered as living, relative to the school's zone. This is usually the single biggest block of points.
- Siblings — a brother or sister already at the school.
- Parent working at the school.
- Family income, large-family status, disability and a small number of other circumstances.
Two things follow from that list, and they are the whole reason this guide exists. First, your address is not a detail you sort out later: it is the biggest lever you have on which schools are realistically open to you. Second, you cannot improve your score by applying earlier, calling more often, or being keener than the next family.
Why this decides your housing search
Catchment points mean the school decision and the housing decision are the same decision. A family who signs a lease in one neighbourhood because the flat was nice, then discovers the schools they wanted sit in a different zone, has spent their strongest points on a kitchen.
In practice that means shortlisting schools and shortlisting neighbourhoods at the same time. Triana, Los Remedios, Nervión and Bermejales are not interchangeable: they differ on which schools you have a real claim to, on how far you will walk twice a day, and on what a four-bedroom flat costs. The order that works is: shortlist schools, find their zones, then look for homes inside them.
Empadronamiento is the proof
Catchment is evidenced by your empadronamiento — your registration with the town hall at a specific address. No registration, no address, no catchment points. And you cannot register without somewhere to register from.
So the real chain is: home first, registration immediately after, then the school application with the registration certificate attached. Each link takes time in Spain, and the last one has a deadline. Our guide to empadronamiento covers the documents and the appointment.
The March window
State and concerted applications for the following curso — the school year — open and close in a defined window, in March. It is short, it is the same for everyone, and missing it does not put you at the back of a queue: it puts you into the leftovers process, where you take whatever places nobody claimed.
Work backwards from March. Housing search and viewings need months, not weeks. A registration appointment can take weeks to come round. Families who start in autumn are comfortable. Families who start in February are choosing between whatever is left.
Arriving mid-year is a different process again, handled outside the main window as an out-of-schedule enrolment, and it depends entirely on which schools happen to have a free seat in your child's year group.
What we can and cannot do
We can research schools against what your family actually needs, build you a shortlist you can compare, contact the schools directly, book and attend visits, tell you honestly which of your choices your points support, and walk you through the application and the documents.
We cannot award you a place. Nobody in Spain can promise one at a state or concerted school, and anyone who does is telling you something the points system does not let them decide.