Teenagers Moving to Spain: Bachillerato, the PAU and the Alternatives
A move to Spain with a child of fourteen to seventeen raises a question younger children’s families can leave for later: which route to university are you choosing? The Spanish route runs through ESO to the Bachillerato and the PAU. The international schools run British, American, IB, French, German and other programs that lead elsewhere. This post explains how each works and how to think about the decision so that the door to university stays open.
Where a child sits at fifteen, and which curriculum they are following, shapes what is realistic at eighteen. That sentence from our guide to Madrid school admissions for 2027-28 is the reason this post exists. The decision is easier at thirteen than at seventeen, and most families with a teenager are somewhere in between.
Two facts frame what follows. Education in Spain is compulsory from six to sixteen, and the Bachillerato is the two-year stage that comes after. So a fourteen-year-old arriving in Spain is in the compulsory secondary years, with time to settle before any track is chosen; a sixteen-year-old arrives at the point where the Bachillerato begins; a seventeen-year-old arrives partway through a two-year program.
The Spanish Route: ESO, Bachillerato, PAU
The Spanish system runs through ESO, the compulsory secondary stage, into the Bachillerato. At its start a student chooses a track: Arts, Sciences, Humanities and Social Sciences, or Technology. At the end of the two years they sit the PAU, the university entrance examinations, and the program a student selects shapes which PAU examinations they take.
So the track choice is where the real decision sits. A student who picks a track at sixteen is also narrowing the degrees that follow naturally from it. How each school structures the tracks, which subjects sit inside each one, and how it prepares students for the PAU are questions for the school itself, worth asking before a place is accepted rather than after.
In public and concertado schools the curriculum is taught in Spanish. A teenager who arrives without the language is placed by the district into an aula de enlace, a bridging class for new arrivals, for up to one academic year, and then needs Spanish to follow the curriculum. For a young child that year is an adjustment. For a teenager it is a year out of a short runway, which is why the Spanish route suits an older child best when they already have some Spanish or the family is staying for good.
Where the Spanish Route Leads
The Spanish route travels. Students coming from the Spanish curriculum can enter universities across the world; the equivalences work well, and Bennett’s Madrid-based consultant Leticia G. de la Rasilla does not see that as a problem at all. The thing to plan for is language rather than recognition. A student heading from the Spanish curriculum to a US or UK university has to be fluent enough in English to follow the course.
Within Spain, Madrid holds the largest concentration of university students in the country, with six public universities, thirteen private ones and the central campus of the national distance university. More families now weigh Madrid as a long-term base rather than a two-year posting, which is why the university question is worth asking earlier than it used to be.
The International Alternatives
Madrid’s international schools span British, American, IB, French, German and other curricula, and a child can often continue in the curriculum they were following before the move or switch to one that will transfer well to the next posting. Alongside them sit blended schools: some teach an international curriculum to a mostly Spanish student body, others combine the Spanish curriculum with a British program or the IB.
An international route may lead somewhere else entirely, and that is the point of it for a family who expects to move again or whose child has a university in another country in mind. What varies school by school is how each international qualification is treated for entry to a Spanish university. If a Spanish university is a possibility, even a distant one, put that question to each school directly and ask where its recent graduates have gone.
For a teenager the curriculum decision is in practice a university decision, and it is easier to make once than to reverse.
Switching Partway Through Is the Hard Case
IGCSEs do not transfer straight into the Spanish system. The examination boards differ, and a student who switches partway through a qualification rarely has an easy time of it. Families partway through an international program should plan a year further ahead than they expect to.
The same applies in reverse. A Spanish family repatriating with a high school student finds that the child has to face the examination at the end of Spanish schooling, and may have gaps in particular subjects that call for tutoring. A child who has kept up their Spanish reintegrates well; the curriculum, not the language, is the thing to prepare for.
One more rule catches teenagers more sharply than younger children. The Spanish system places a child by the year they were born, which does not always match the year group they have left; the mismatch is common for families from a system with a different cut-off and close to certain for families from the Southern Hemisphere. For a sixteen-year-old a repeated or skipped year moves the whole Bachillerato and PAU timetable, so find out before you accept a place.
Thinking It Through by Age
At fourteen, there is room. A child in the compulsory secondary years has time to gain Spanish, or to settle into an international school, before any track is chosen. The question to answer now is how long you expect to stay, because that decides whether the Spanish route is worth the language investment.
At fifteen and sixteen, the choice is live. The Bachillerato track is chosen at its start, and this is the year to ask each school, whichever route you take, what the child would be committing to and where it leads.
At seventeen, the question is admission into the final year of a two-year program. Whether a school will take a student at that point, and on what terms, depends on the school and on space in the year group, so ask directly rather than assume. International schools see more mid-year turnover than local ones, so a place in a senior year group is not out of the question.
Questions worth putting to every school:
- Which year group would you place my child in, and on what basis?
- Which track or subject choices would be open to them, and when must they be made?
- If we leave partway through, what will my child carry with them?
- Where have your recent graduates gone: Spanish universities, universities abroad, or both?
- How do you prepare students for the PAU, or for the examinations your own curriculum leads to?
How a Bennett consultant helps
Our Madrid education consultants compare the Spanish national curriculum against the British, American, IB, French, German and other routes, explain how the stages align and where the gaps may be, and map out what each one opens up at university level. They advise on how the Bachillerato program a child selects shapes their PAU examinations, and on applying in Spain or abroad, so that the school decision at fifteen and the university decision at eighteen are made as one.
For the wider picture of how Spanish schools connect to university, read our interview with Leticia G. de la Rasilla on schools in Spain.
Bennett International Education Consultancy works directly with hundreds of families each year across the globe. We support families by helping them make informed decisions about the best-fit schools for their children; with our guidance, they secure placement in preschools, private day schools, public/state schools, boarding schools, colleges and universities, including schools with particular programs, such as special needs support.
