← Back to homeLearnlife Urban Hub
Barcelona, Spain · Private
Illustration · Barcelona
Learnlife Urban Hub is the Barcelona secondary school of the Learnlife network, in the centre of the city on Carrer d'Enric Granados. It takes students from twelve to eighteen in three groups: Explorers 12-14, Creators 14-16 and Changemakers 16-18; eleven-year-olds are admitted if they turn twelve before the end of the year. The arrangement is unusual: instead of rows of desks there are expert studios, open spaces and project work, and assessment runs not through one-off tests but through portfolios, real projects and a Learning Vitae. A leaver from the Urban Hub receives the American High School Diploma, can validate it as the Spanish ESO and can add Advanced Placement courses to meet the requirements of particular universities; the school also supports the SAT and the Spanish EBAU. Learnlife has three hubs - the Urban Hub in Barcelona, the Eco Hub in Castelldefels (ages 5-12) and the Village Hub in Sant Pere de Ribes / Sitges (ages 10-16) - each with fees of its own. The school gives its community in figures: 32 nationalities, and in 2025 it had waiting lists.
Key facts
Tuition
≈ $14 235–15 387 a year
12 600–13 620 EUR
Programmes
AP · American programme
Languages of instruction
English
Registration fee
≈ $107
95 EUR
About the fees Fees for the Barcelona Urban Hub in 2026: Explorers and Creators (ages 12-16) 12600 euros a year or ten payments of 1260 euros; Changemakers (ages 16-18) 13620 euros a year or ten payments of 1362 euros. The one-off charges are the same for all hubs: an application fee of 95 euros, an enrolment fee of 2000 euros and a refundable contribution of 2000 euros. Discounts: 5 per cent from the second child in a family and 5 per cent for paying the year in a single payment before enrolment. The school publishes the details of its fees in a separate document for each hub.
Admissions The school says on its admissions page that families from Spain and around the world join it, and its community counts 32 nationalities. Lessons are in English: secondary entry asks for an intermediate level of English, but a child without it may still be admitted on a commitment to improve the language - the admissions team decides case by case. Students pick up Spanish and Catalan along the way, and those who want to continue in the Spanish system get help reaching the Spanish level they need. Applications are accepted all year round and the school advises applying as early as possible: it had waiting lists in 2025 and expects them again. The process is set out on a separate application page; an application starts with a form on the site giving the details of a parent or legal representative. The school says plainly whom it suits: families who want a school built on relationships, passion and purpose, on the student's own autonomy and on preparation for life rather than only for exams.
Stages and year groups Grades Explorers 12-14 - Changemakers 16-18. Three secondary groups: Explorers ages 12-14, Creators 14-16 and Changemakers 16-18. An eleven-year-old is admitted if they turn twelve before the end of the calendar year. The network's primary stage (ages 5-12) is not here but at the Eco Hub in Castelldefels.
Address Carrer d'Enric Granados, 7, 08007 Barcelona
Accreditations and programmes verified against official registries
NEASC · accreditationCollege Board · 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
NEASCNew England Association of Schools and Colleges
An American accreditation working since 1885. For international schools it uses an approach where the visitors look first at live lessons rather than at folders of paperwork: the team works in the school for about a week. It is the only one here whose public directory honestly separates accredited schools from candidates.
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 →College BoardCollege Board, the AP programme
An American organisation that allows a school to put the letters AP on a pupil's transcript. The permission is granted course by course and tied to a particular teacher, it has to be renewed every year, and College Board reads the course syllabus before granting it.
What the badge means for this school. The school is allowed to run advanced AP courses - not the school as a whole, but one by one: by subject and by teacher. Governance, safeguarding and the primary years are not part of that check. Which subjects are actually approved is visible in the ledger. The entry stands in the organisation's public register - anyone can check it. Authorisation here runs a year at a time: the register lists the school for the 2025-2026 school year.
Register to check for yourself, and the full guide →AP
Advanced Placement: American advanced courses for the senior years. The exam for a course is set and marked by the College Board, not by the school. A good result is counted by American universities as a first-year course already passed, which saves a student time and money.
What this means for this school. A school does not get to call a course AP automatically: the College Board reads the course syllabus and approves it separately for every subject and every teacher, and the permission has to be renewed each year. Every approved school in the world is listed in the open AP Course Ledger, and this school's entry there stands as a line in the accreditation block above. How many courses a school is approved for, and in which subjects, the ledger does not show in its general listing. AP has no leaving certificate of its own: it sits on top of the school's main programme rather than being a separate system.
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.
Exams and destinations from the school's official website
Where leavers go: Harbour.Space University · CODE University of Applied Sciences · Universitat de Barcelona · Sarah Lawrence College · SAE · Tetr College of Business · EADA · FX Film School · The New School · Vancouver Film School
Learnlife leavers go on to universities, to specialist schools and into entrepreneurship. The school names where its leavers have gone: Harbour.Space University in Bangkok for computer science, CODE University of Applied Sciences in Berlin for business management and entrepreneurship, the University of Barcelona for art history, Sarah Lawrence College in New York for liberal arts, SAE in Australia for film studies, Tetr College of Business, the EADA business school in Barcelona for UX design, the FX film school in Barcelona for film studies, The New School in Paris for fashion design and Vancouver Film School for game design; one more leaver studies cybersecurity in Switzerland and another founded his own business, Go Mate. The school lists separately where its 2026 leavers are applying: Toulouse Business School, the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, ESADE in Barcelona, The Lir Academy at Trinity College Dublin, Aalto University in Helsinki, Trinity College Dublin itself, Harbour.Space in Barcelona, Rome University of Fine Arts, Tetr College of Business, the Swiss School of Management in Barcelona and the BIMM Institute in Dublin. The Spanish route requires the ESO, the bachillerato and the EBAU, the American and international routes Advanced Placement courses; the school prepares students for both and runs a separate pathways programme with a personal mentor.
Facilities
The school does not describe its premises on its website.
Summer camp: the school runs its own camp; whether it takes children from outside is not stated on the website
The network does run a summer camp, named on a separate /summer-camp page; the school does not set out its content or dates for the Barcelona hub there.
Teaching staff
The school publishes neither the number of its teachers nor their qualifications.
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%)75 Community rating (16%)no dataparent reviews are needed: the criterion switches on at the fifth verified one Exams and destinations (12%) scored on disclosed data70 Safety and wellbeing (12%) scored on disclosed data55 Accreditation and verifiability (10%)90 Teaching staff (10%) scored on disclosed data55 Facilities (10%) scored on disclosed data55 Clubs and activities (8%) scored on disclosed data55 "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 8 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