A report by the Association of Private and Independent Schools (CICAE) says 71% of the 151 publicly funded private schools it examined in the Madrid region require families to pay fees for their children’s education. Some schools ask for up to €250 a month, describing the payments as voluntary contributions to improve resources or saying families should contribute, the report says.
The average annual amount requested per student, combining compulsory and voluntary payments, is €1,000, according to CICAE. At schools with the highest fees, the total can reach €2,500 a year. CICAE director Elena Cid described the practice as “unfair competition” from the publicly funded private-school sector.
Spanish education law prohibits public and publicly funded private schools from requiring families to pay for tuition that is meant to be free. The report says some schools present required payments as voluntary contributions. Rules also stipulate that paid extracurricular activities take place outside school hours.
CICAE gathered information on fees and other contributions, along with how schools explain the charges. Researchers posing as parents interested in enrolling a child in the second cycle of early childhood education contacted schools for the current academic year. The report covers 151 of the region’s 551 publicly funded private schools; it excludes 123 schools that provide only early childhood, secondary, special-needs or vocational education.
The report says 15% of the schools examined did not rule out excluding a student from activities or content if a fee was not paid. Four in ten did not list all service prices on their websites, while only five schools charged no fees related to education.
Cid said families should be able to understand the cost of each service, what is optional and what happens if they decline it. She also said household income should not determine whether a child can access publicly funded education.
María Carmen Morillas, president of the parents’ federation FAPA Francisco Giner de los Ríos, called for schools to communicate charges clearly. She said families contact the federation each year with complaints about confusion over fees.
The 11th edition of CICAE’s annual report focuses solely on publicly funded private schools in Madrid, unlike earlier editions, which sampled schools in eight regions. CICAE said the change reflects the growth of what it calls a commercial model of publicly funded private education in Madrid.
Publicly funded private schools enrolled 28% of Madrid’s 1.2 million pupils in the 2023–24 school year, compared with 53% in public schools and 19% in fully private schools, according to the latest regional government figures. A separate 2024 study by EsadeEcPol, based on official data from across Spain, found that more than 85% of pupils in publicly funded private schools paid fees, amounting to nearly €1 billion a year.
Sources: El País Educación.