Overview of Education System
The Spanish Constitution of 1978 created a highly decentralized education system. The Spanish government oversees legislation, basic structure, and cooperative initiatives among all autonomous communities and with other nations. Madrid, like all autonomous communities, is responsible for all other aspects of education, including schools, curricula, and financial and personnel management. Current educational regulations, including the 2013 Organic Law for Improvement of Educational Quality (known by its Spanish acronym, LOMCE), guarantee the uniformity and unity of the education system while also allowing autonomous communities to make individual decisions.6 This law includes an additional provision for state and regional cooperation to promote an adequate description of the relationships among competencies, content, and assessment criteria of the different stages of education. Thus, the curriculum has a centralized common framework that is developed and implemented by the autonomous communities and schools.7,8
In Madrid, schools are classified according to whether they are state or private, although the vast majority of private schools also are publicly funded. Out of 3,620 schools in Madrid that offer elementary and secondary education, 1,880 are public, 1,180 private, and 560 private but publicly funded. Public expenditure on education in Madrid totaled €4.85 million in 2015. Of that amount, €3.31 million was used for nonuniversity education, €1.49 million for university education, and €51,000 for training for employment.9
Structure of the Education System
The current basic structure of the Spanish education system was validated in 2013 by LOMCE, which did not modify the organization established in 2006 and previously in 1990. This structure is the same for the Autonomous Community of Madrid. The levels of education comprise preprimary education (ages 0 to 6), primary education (ages 6 to 12), and secondary education (ages 12 to 18).
Preprimary education is not compulsory. It is organized into two cycles, one for children ages 0 to 3 (87,922 students in Madrid were enrolled in the 2015–2016 school year) and the other for children ages 3 to 6 (202,206 students in Madrid were enrolled in 2015–2016). The second cycle is free of charge.
Primary education and compulsory secondary education comprise Spainʼs basic education—10 years of schooling (generally for students ages 6 to 16) that are compulsory and free of charge. Primary education consists of Grades 1 to 6 (416,138 students were enrolled in primary education in Madrid in 2015–2016).
Secondary education is divided into two stages: compulsory secondary and post-compulsory secondary. Compulsory secondary education comprises Grades 7 to 10, which generally correspond to ages 12 to 16 (258,891 students were enrolled in Madrid in 2015–2016).
Post-compulsory secondary education (Grades 11 to 12) includes the baccalaureate and vocational education intermediate level (in 2015–2016 in Madrid, 105,921 students were enrolled at the baccalaureate level and 34,169 at the vocational intermediate level).
Last, higher education includes university (UNESCOʼs ISCED Level 6 and above) and higher level vocational education, higher level arts and design, and higher level sports education (ISCED Level 5) (38,761 students were enrolled in higher level vocational education in Madrid in 2015–2016).10,11