← Back to homeAquinas American School
Pozuelo de Alarcon, Spain · est. 2012 · Private
Illustration · Pozuelo de Alarcon
Aquinas American School is a Catholic school on the American curriculum in the Monte Alina neighbourhood of Pozuelo de Alarcón outside Madrid, founded in 2012 and part of the Mathema Educación group alongside Atlas American School in Estepona and the International School of Navarra. It lives on two sites: Transversal Cuatro 4 holds the campus from preschool to grade 8, Poniente 20 holds the high school, and there are four kilometres between them. This record is about the first of them. The programme is American, taught to Common Core standards with full immersion in English, while Spanish language and literature and the geography and history of Spain are taught in Spanish - which is how the school brings a child to bilingualism without taking them out of the Spanish system: the grade is set by year of birth exactly as if the pupil had stayed at their previous school. It is Catholic without belonging to any movement, and it has its own chaplain, a parish priest. Across the grades the school runs four bear houses - Grizzly, Polar, Black and Kodiak - and points in them are earned not only on sports days and at quizzes but for conduct in the canteen. The main thing a parent needs to know: the school publishes neither day fees, nor pupil numbers, nor teacher numbers, and the IB diploma lives on its other campus, so after grade 8 a child moves there.
Key facts
Programmes
American programme
Languages of instruction
English
About the fees The school publishes one figure, and it concerns the senior stage: a full boarding package of 44000 euros a year, which covers tuition, health insurance, accommodation, three meals a day with snacks, textbooks, two sets of uniform, round-the-clock supervision, academic guidance, university counselling for grades 11-12, weekend activities and academic field trips. There are no day rates on the site for any stage.
Admissions Admission runs through the OpenApply platform and all year round. An application is needed, along with grades for the two previous years and the current one and letters of recommendation from a teacher or adviser, which the referee enters into the platform directly; documents obtained abroad for grades 7-11 must be apostilled or certified. For children whose English is not their first language the Duolingo English Test is compulsory from grade 7: 120 points for grades 7-8, 130 for grades 9-10 and 135 for grades 11-12. The school promises a decision on preschool and K3 within fifteen days; for the other grades admission runs by order of application and availability of places, and any enrolment stays conditional until the school receives the previous year's grades. The committee looks at the academic history, its own assessment of the child, the recommendations and the family's interest in how the school works. The grade is assigned by year of birth: 2022 goes to K1, 2019 to grade 1, 2014 to grade 6, and so on to 2008 and grade 12. Children with learning difficulties are considered case by case and carried by the student support service. The school takes foreigners: it states directly which documents children who studied abroad need and which English test is taken by those for whom English is not their first language.
Stages and year groups Grades K1 from age 3 - grade 8, that is 2º ESO. Three stages run one after another on this campus: preschool K1-K3 from three to six years of age, lower school from grade 1 to grade 5 (ages 6-11) and middle school from grade 6 to grade 8 (ages 11-14). The grades match the Spanish ones thus: K1-K3 are Infantil 1-3, grades 1 to 6 are the six years of Primaria, grades 7 and 8 are 1º and 2º ESO. After that a pupil moves to the high school campus at Poniente 20, where grades 9-12 run. In the preschool the work is built on learning centres - themed areas the children move between on their own; in the lower school the stage is split into early grades (1-2), intermediate grades (3-4) and a transition grade 5; every middle school pupil has an adviser of their own.
Address C/ Transversal Cuatro 4, Urbanización Monte Alina
Accreditations and programmes verified against official registries
MSA · accreditationMathema Educación · school is part of the networkschool is in an official registryconfirmed by a school document, by membership or by taking part in a networkclaimed by the school, no confirmation, not counted in the scoreGuide to all organisations → What stands behind each entry
MSAMiddle States Association of Colleges and Schools
One of the oldest American accreditations, working since 1887 in more than a hundred countries and linked to the Office of Overseas Schools of the US State Department. It judges the school as an institution across twelve areas, including finances, governance, premises and student support.
What the badge means for this school. The school has been through this organisation's accreditation. It was judged as a whole: governance, safeguarding, staff, premises, teaching. The entry stands in the organisation's public register - anyone can check it.
Register to check for yourself, and the full guide →American programme
The American school programme, with the High School Diploma at the end. It usually comes together with AP courses, which the College Board stands behind, and with an American accreditation - MSA, NEASC or Cognia.
What this means for this school. The diploma is written out by the school itself: the American programme has no common leaving exam, and the content of the senior years is set by the school. Outside checking therefore rests on two things here - the accreditation of the school, and the AP exams if the school runs them.
Mathema Educaciónschool network
Mathema Educación is a school group whose history begins in 2012 with Aquinas American School in Pozuelo de Alarcón: its founders, supported by families, bought the building of a Spanish school and turned it into an American one. The Mathema Educación brand was created in October 2022 as the name of the group, which runs three schools and a student residence. Besides Aquinas, these are the British International School of Navarra in Gorraiz (Navarre), managed by the Aquinas team since the 2020/21 school year, and Atlas - American School of Malaga in Estepona, opened in 2022. The Aquinas residence for high school students is in Montepríncipe. The group's site is mathemaeducacion.es.
What this means for this school. The network owns or operates the school. Its accreditation and programme authorisation the school obtains separately, in its own name.
Exams and destinations from the school's official website
The school publishes nothing about where its leavers go: no share going on to university, no exam results, no list of universities.
Facilities from the school's official website
·Swimming poolnot stated on the website
✓Sports hall
·Laboratoriesnot stated on the website
·Theatre or assembly hallnot stated on the website
·Librarynot stated on the website
✓Catering
·School transportnot stated on the website
·Boardingnot stated on the website
Also on site: Sports ground or field
Campus: The PreK-8 campus stands at Transversal Cuatro 4 in the Monte Alina neighbourhood, the high school at Poniente 20 in the same neighbourhood, and the residence is in Alcorcón. Of its own sports facilities the school names a 7x7 (7-a-side) football pitch, basketball courts and a gymnasium, without saying which campus they stand on; the middle school also trains at the municipal Ángel Nieto sports centre. There is a canteen of its own. The school gives no written inventory of its other rooms: the virtual tour section consists of panoramas and videos.
Clubs and activities (20): Graphic design · Art · Theatre · Programming · Chess · STEM · 3D printing · Yearbook · Choir · Music academy · Art club · Football · Basketball · Volleyball · Tennis · Padel · Judo · Ballet · Roller skating · Combined events
Teaching staff from the school's official website
·Teachers listed by namenot published
·Teacher qualificationsnot stated
·Number of teachersthe school does not say
·Students per teacher or class sizenot stated
By name the school publishes only its leadership: the head of school, who is also the high school principal, separate principals for the middle school and for the preschool with the lower school, a chaplain, a residence director, a director of admissions and communications and a finance officer. It does not state teacher numbers, their qualifications, the pupil-teacher ratio or class sizes. Every middle school pupil has an adviser of their own, and the student support service works on both campuses.
Safety and wellbeing from the school's official website
The school says nothing on its website about security, medical care or pupil support.
Reviews
No reviews yet. The community rating counts towards the score once a school has five verified reviews - until then we do not show a zero, so as not to mislead.
Criteria breakdown criterion weight in brackets
Academics and programmes (16%)72 Community rating (16%)no dataparent reviews are needed: the criterion switches on at the fifth verified one Exams and destinations (12%) scored on disclosed data55 Safety and wellbeing (12%) scored on disclosed data55 Accreditation and verifiability (10%)85 Teaching staff (10%) scored on disclosed data55 Facilities (10%) scored on disclosed data70 Clubs and activities (8%) scored on disclosed data78 Value for money (6%) scored at the median62 "Scored on disclosed data" stands where we count only what the school has written about itself on its own site: exams and destinations, safety and wellbeing, teaching staff, facilities, clubs and activities. A low score here means the school does not write about this, not that the school does not have it: a school with good security and a sparse site will score low. A school can fill in its profile, and the score will be counted again.
The score is counted from 7 of the 9 criteria.Only those with checkable data count: programmes and accreditations from official registers, the fee from a published price list. Where it says "scored on the median", the school has no data and the middle of the list is put in its place, so that a gap gives no advantage. Admissions, teaching staff and reviews come in as their data arrives.
The full methodology → Similar schools in the country