← Back to homeIES Plurilingüe Rosalía de Castro
Santiago de Compostela, Spain · State
Illustration · Santiago de Compostela
IES Plurilingüe Rosalía de Castro is a state secondary school in the centre of Santiago de Compostela, a few dozen metres from the cathedral, and by the age of its Diploma Programme it is one of the oldest IB schools in Spain: it has run the Diploma Programme since 1989. The Diploma Programme runs together with the ordinary bachillerato in two modalities - "Science and technology" and "Humanities and social sciences" - and a student leaves with two qualifications at once. The building is a rare one: the Colexio San Clemente de Pasantes, a house with four hundred years of history founded by Archbishop Juan de San Clemente at the beginning of the seventeenth century on the model of the Fonseca college; at first it housed theology scholarship holders, in 1941 it became a girls' secondary institute, the school became mixed in the 1985/86 year, and in 1993 a sports hall and an auditorium designed by the German architect Paul Kleihues were added behind the main building. The school now has around a thousand students across all stages: ESO, bachillerato, the Diploma Programme, higher-level vocational cycles and secondary education for adults. Its extracurricular life is dense and visible from outside: its own drama group, orchestra and choir, exchanges and a language immersion programme, STEMbach, entrepreneurship, the school library RosalíaTECA, and olympiads from which its students bring back prizes - silver in the national round of the chemistry olympiad and first place in the regional philosophy olympiad for a second-year Diploma Programme student. The institute does not name its language of instruction directly: all its pages for pupils and parents - admission, stages, departments, the language project - are written in Galician, so the language of instruction on this card is Galician; English it develops through exchanges and immersions in Ireland and England.
Key facts
Programmes
IB · DP · National programme
Languages of instruction
Galician
Admissions The school invites students to the Diploma Programme separately: every school year, after Holy Week, it holds an in-person information meeting at the institute for families and students interested in the programme; the school notifies people personally and publishes a notice. The documents for the application and for enrolment are posted on separate pages of the programme section. For ESO and the baccalaureate admission follows the common Galician procedure: applications from 1 to 20 March, a single binding application; for the 2026/27 school year 12 places in the 1st year of ESO are kept for pupils with specific educational needs. For the Diploma Programme for the 2026/27 school year applications were accepted from 25 June to 3 July, in person at the institute only: the application form, a motivation letter and a confirmation form, and pupils from other schools also attach their grades for all 4 years of ESO.
Stages and year groups Grades 1º ESO - 2º Bacharelato, higher-level vocational cycles and adult secondary education (ESA). The stages run right through: compulsory ESO, bachillerato in two modalities, the IB Diploma Programme in the final two years alongside the national curriculum, higher-level vocational cycles and secondary education for adults (ESA). The Diploma Programme is designed for students aged 16-19.
Address Rúa San Clemente, 3, 15705 Santiago de Compostela
Accreditations and programmes verified against official registries
IB · DP · authorised programmeschool 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
IBInternational Baccalaureate
A Swiss non-profit, working since 1968. Its programmes are among the most widely recognised school programmes in the world. Authorisation is granted stage by stage, so a school with the final stage does not necessarily run the younger ones; which stages this school holds is set out in the line below.
What the badge means for this school. The school is allowed to run this programme and to award its certificate. This is a confirmation of the programme, not a judgement on the school as a whole. The entry stands in the organisation's public register - anyone can check it. At this school: DP (ages 16-19). DP is the final stage, ages 16 to 19: six subjects plus a compulsory core of theory of knowledge, an extended essay and CAS. The diploma is accepted by universities all over the world, and in a number of countries it counts for admission on the same footing as the local leaving certificate.
Register to check for yourself, and the full guide →National programme
The state school programme of the country the school stands in: it is set by that country's ministry of education, which also licenses the school and awards the leaving certificate. That certificate is used for entry to local universities, and abroad it is matched to the local one.
What this means for this school. This entry does not count towards the score, and that is deliberate. Every lawful school in a country works to the national programme, so on its own it tells one school apart from no other - unlike the French, German or Russian programmes, which are carried abroad and confirmed by the register of their organisation. We show it because a parent needs to know what programme their child is taught and what certificate the child will get. Counting it would lift the whole ranking at once and still tell nobody apart.
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 hall
✓Library
·Cateringnot stated on the website
·School transportnot stated on the website
·Boardingnot stated on the website
Campus: The main building is the Colexio San Clemente de Pasantes of the early seventeenth century, in the historic centre of Santiago next to the cathedral. Since 1993 two structures designed by Paul Kleihues have stood in the courtyard behind it: a sports hall and an auditorium. The school library operates under the name RosalíaTECA.
Clubs and activities (6): Theatre · Orchestra · Choir · Olympiads · Entrepreneurship · Exchanges and language immersion
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
The institute publishes its teachers by name: the departments page lists 104 people with personal email addresses on the institute's domain. It gives no qualifications, experience, class size or pupil-teacher ratio.
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%)82 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 data75 Clubs and activities (8%) scored on disclosed data76 Value for money (6%) scored at the median74 "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