SPAIN: STATE SCHOOL OR PRIVATE?
When we first moved to Mallorca, we put our daughter into a private school called Escola Global which we had looked at during a long weekend trip some months before. It was a particularly fraught decision. The school held an open day shortly after we arrived on the island and I was not impressed at all. The lovely teacher who’d shown us around during our first visit was no longer working at the school and she’d been replaced by a scowly woman entirely lacking in warmth. My wife and I talked about it a great deal. We thought about looking at other private schools but the open day had been postponed so many times that it was too late to enrol anywhere else. Our only other option was to put our daughter into a state school but my wife was terrified at the prospect of our then three-year-old being the only non-Mallorquí speaker and perhaps being unable to communicate if she was hurt or needed to go to the loo.
Unfortunately, my wife won the argument and our little girl ended up enduring a pretty unpleasant six weeks at a private school that, to be frank, was barely a school at all. Those six weeks ended up costing us a whopping €6,200. That loss included a €1,500 deposit to reserve a place, an annual €500 enrolment fee, the cost of the two months during which she attended classes and an additional four months’ notice at €700 per month.
One day in October, I had gone to collect my daughter and found her delirious and with bruising on her face. By the time we got home, the bruises were dark and she had woozily explained that she’d been jostled in the stairs and had fallen down the last few steps. She had received no medical attention. In fact, I was later told that the school had no staff with up-to-date first aid training, no fire alarm system or sprinklers, no designated fire escapes and no emergency procedures in place. To make matters worse, my daughter’s teacher — that scowly woman — later suggested that my girl had invented the fall.
We took her out of the school. The owner refused to repay our deposit and sent me a couple of absolutely remarkable emails which I won’t copy here. I later met several people who’d had run-ins with the owner, including a couple who’d taken legal action against him. A couple of years later, Escola Global went bust and was bailed out by the wealthy parents of a few of the pupils. A short time later, it was sold but not before the school’s best teachers, who had not been paid their salaries, left to form their own school, The Orange Tree, just outside the town of Santa Maria del Camí. The Orange Tree very much focuses on the arts and creative activities but it also has an absolutely excellent academic record. In fact, it has the best academic record of any private school on the island.
Escola Global still operates. I know a couple of the pupils and they seem pretty happy with it. I wouldn’t let either of my kids set foot in the place.
When we took our oldest girl out of Escola Global, we put her into a little village school a short drive from our house and it turned out to be one of the best decisions we have ever made. Though larger now, at the time the school had just fifteen pupils. Half of those were the children of immigrants like us. Another little girl spoke English and she became good friends with our daughter. The headmistress was and still is about as accommodating as it is possible for a person to be.
Within three months at the state school, our daughter was speaking Mallorquí pretty well and had an understanding of Spanish. By the end of that first year, her teacher told us that she was almost native tongue fluent in Mallorquí and that her Spanish was pretty good. Seven years later, plenty of local people have told us that our daughter’s speech is indistinguishable from that of their own kids. Her Spanish is great too.
The school is well run and very well funded. There are only three kids in my oldest daughter’s year group and nine in my youngest’s. They hike through the mountains. They camp overnight. They have an allotment where they grow fruit and flowers. They learn all sorts of skills, both arcane and modern. They press olive oil in a 700-year-old tafona or olive mill. They’re making a podcast. All the kids are issued with decent tablets, laptops and other devices. Both my daughters love going to school.
Don’t be afraid of the state schools and don’t underestimate your kids. What seemed a horrible trial to my wife, to the point of cruelty, and what seemed pretty daunting to me, turned out to be a breeze for a smiley three-year-old. She absolutely thrived and now she is among the best communicators I know.
Of course, the state schools teach in their local language. In our case, the teachers speak Mallorquí, which is very similar to Catalan. The textbooks are in Catalan because that’s the official language of the Balearic Islands. The kids are taught Spanish because the Balearic Islands, though self-governing, belong to Spain.
There are seventeen private international schools in Mallorca. Two are German, one is French, one is Swedish and the rest teach the kids in English and follow the English curriculum. All the English-language schools charge fees ranging from €7,000 to €12,000 per year depending on the age of your child. Palma College is for A-level students only and charges €16,500 per year, which seems alarmingly high. Private international schools on the Spanish mainland are often considerably cheaper than those in Mallorca.
When considering private schools, first of all, definitely ask for a trial day. In fact, ask for a whole week and see if you can swing it. Speak to other parents and be sure to ask them for their honest opinion. Ask them if they know any families who’ve left the school and see if they’ll tell you why. Read plenty of reviews online but make sure you know who’s writing them. I read a few glowing reviews of Escola Global but learned much later that they had been written by people with a financial interest in the school.
One more thing I should add: if you or your spouse works at a private school then your kids will almost certainly get a free or very heavily discounted education. Teachers at private schools in Spain are paid very low wages and offering a free ride to staff members’ kids is one way the schools tempt employees to stay. A full time teacher at a private school in Mallorca will be paid around €25,000 per year. If that teacher has two children then the waived fees for registration and tuition would be worth more than €20,000 per year. Taking into account income tax, two lots of free private education basically doubles the teacher’s earnings. This is definitely something to bear in mind if you have teaching qualifications. In fact, you don’t necessarily need teaching qualifications to work at a private school. They’re not regulated like state schools so the owners can employ whoever they like. And these days skills in horticulture, ecology, conservation, cooking and esoteric arts such as circus performance or even DJ-ing and music production are sometimes as much in demand as regular academic subjects like maths.
