How to find out if a school in Spain is good

Those who are unfamiliar with Spain's schooling system may find it difficult to choose which one to send their children to.

It's an important decision and you want to make sure you’re sending them to the best possible school, or at least one that fits their needs well.

How do you find out what ranking a school has and if generally considered to be a good one?

In Spain, local families usually judge whether a school is of a high standard based on word of mouth and the school's reputation within the area, but if you’re new to a town or city in Spain you may not have that network yet.

The good news is that there are various studies on school quality and effectiveness available to help you decide. It’s important to know that most of these studies will be in Spanish or another local language such as Catalan in Catalonia, so you will need to get it translated if you don’t speak the language or get someone to help.

To assess the standards of a school, studies use average scores that schools obtained in Diagnostic Evaluations. Details such as socioeconomic context in which each school operates are also taken into consideration, therefore schools are ranked highly when average results are well above what is statistically expected, given its context. The same criterion applies to what are deemed to be low-quality schools.

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The main factors looked at when determining a school's grade or ranking are:

• The students and their teaching-learning process
• The teachers
• The school itself as an organisation

They also look at which institutions implement the necessary reinforcement and support measures when faced with students that may have difficulties.

Recommendable schools in Spain are also considered to be those where students don’t have to repeat a year very often. This is to ensure minimum learning levels.

Schools that receive higher rankings also typically conduct frequent learning assessments to find out how the students are doing.

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Of course, teaching staff come very high on the list too. It’s important to have educators who are involved in ongoing training and development and who care about their students.

It’s also important that the school has clearly defined vision and action policy and focuses on organisation. The last factor taken into consideration in school rankings is material resources and the types of installations they have. Do they have sports equipment for example, are large play area or a good art’s studio?

Many regional education systems have their own reports, but there are also are specific websites and newspapers which rank schools, according to some of the criteria above.

For example, Micole.net lists the top 100 public schools in Spain based on its results, metrics, and ratings. You can also filter the results according to if you want primary or secondary schools, concertado (semi private) or public and of course by area. It will also give each school a ranking out of five based on reviews from other parents who have sent their kids there or know of it in their area. Some of them also leave helpful comments.

EL ESPAÑOL also does an annual analysis of the 100 best schools in Spain ranked according to their educational projects, quality, internationalisation, and innovation.

Forbes also does a similar ranking of its top 100 schools in Spain every year. Here you can find the list for 2025.

Keep in mind that many of the schools on the El Español and Forbes lists are international private schools, but if you’re looking for a public school it’s worth searching through them to see which public or concertado schools made the list.

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