← Back to homeLycée Français de Barcelone
Barcelona, Spain · est. 1924 · Private
Illustration · Barcelona
The Lycée Français de Barcelone opened in 1924 and remains a directly managed AEFE school - that is, the French agency runs it itself, and its teachers are mostly tenured French ministry staff seconded here. It is the largest French school in our Spanish sample: the school names about 2900 pupils from more than 73 nationalities, while the AEFE registry credits it with 2731. There are two sites: the main one in Pedralbes on Bosch i Gimpera, holding the primary school, the collège and the lycée, and a separate kindergarten building on Carrer de Munner with fifteen classes. The feature worth travelling for: it runs not one system but two at once. The French one, up to the baccalauréat, and the Spanish one, following the official Spanish programmes with Spanish-credentialled teachers, Spanish and Catalan from the kindergarten and genuine Spanish documents at the end: the Graduado en ESO after grade 10 and the Título de Bachiller after grade 12. Catalan can be waived if the family is in Spain only briefly, but then the Spanish documents do not follow. The senior stage has 614 pupils in 22 classes; in seconde the choices are theatre, fine arts, Latin and Greek, and after that three specialist subjects or the STMG route. Theatre here is no minor option but a full branch: three hours a week in the senior timetable, visits to Barcelona theatres at least six times a year, plus an evening studio of five hours a week that stages one or two plays a year, and a separate studio for the middle stage. The school's own health service runs all day: a school doctor, two nurses, open from eight in the morning to six in the evening, compulsory screenings in grades 1 and 6, vaccination campaigns, chronic-illness care and individual psychological attention for a pupil on referral by the administration, the teachers, the parents or the pupil themselves.
Key facts
Tuition
≈ $7 149–8 361 a year
6 328–7 401 EUR
Programmes
French programme · National programme
Languages of instruction
French
Languages taught
Spanish, English
Registration fee
≈ $1 695
1 500 EUR
About the fees The annual fee depends on the stage: 6328 EUR for the kindergarten and the primary school, 6794 EUR for the collège and 7401 EUR for the lycée. On top of the fee the school charges a first-enrolment fee - 1500 EUR, or 750 EUR for children arriving from the école française Ferdinand de Lesseps - and an annual solidarity fund contribution of 25 EUR per pupil; digital textbooks are billed separately by stage and subject choice in the first term. The canteen is not included and is charged by the number of days a week: kindergarten on four days 1163 EUR, primary 1456 EUR on five days and 1163 EUR on four, collège and lycée 1511 EUR on five days, 1210 EUR on four and 907 EUR on three; a single meal costs 9 EUR, no more than fifteen a term.
Admissions Admission runs by queue and by priority, not by competition. In petite section a place is guaranteed to those who register within the stated window (1 December to 31 January in the announced intake) and who either hold French nationality or already have a brother or sister at the school; the rest go in order of registration. From the second year upwards the priority is: first French nationals who have studied in the French system and have at least one parent transferred abroad for work, then non-French pupils of the French network on the same terms. The application is made by the parents or legal guardians, the grade is set after a placement assessment, and admission counts only after the school's final notification and payment of the first fee - without it the admission is cancelled. Enrolment must be completed by 1 October, or the place goes to the waiting list. Pupils who speak no Spanish or Catalan are given introductory courses to catch up with ordinary lessons. The school does admit foreign pupils: it names pupils of other nationalities from the French school network directly in its order of priority, and its pupils, in its words, come from more than 73 nationalities.
Stages and year groups Grades petite section from age 3 - grade 12, age 18. The stages run straight through and across two sites. The kindergarten is three levels in a separate building on Carrer de Munner, fifteen classes, 26 hours a week: Monday, Tuesday and Thursday from 9:00 to 12:30 and from 14:00 to 16:30, Wednesday from 9:00 to 12:00, Friday from 9:00 to 12:30 and from 14:00 to 15:30. The primary school, the collège and the lycée are on the main site in Pedralbes. The collège is grades 6 to 9 and ends with the French brevet (DNB). The lycée is grades 10 to 12, 614 pupils in 22 classes; grade 10 carries 29 compulsory hours a week including Catalan, up to three hours of electives and 12-16 hours of independent work, and from grade 11 three specialist subjects or the STMG route.
Address Carrer de Bosch i Gimpera 6-10, 08034 Barcelona
Accreditations and programmes verified against official registries
AEFE · accreditationschool 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
AEFEAgency for French Education Abroad
It runs the network of French schools worldwide, while the accreditation itself, the homologation, is granted by the French education ministry and inspected by French state inspectors. A leaver from a homologated school moves into a school in France without an entrance examination. Homologation is granted stage by stage, so it sometimes covers only part of the year groups.
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 →French programme
The state programme of France. A school is homologated by the French ministry of education, and a leaver may move into a school in France without entrance tests. Homologation is granted stage by stage, so it sometimes covers only part of the year groups.
What this means for this school. Which year groups of this school are covered by homologation - only the primary ones, or all the way to the final year - is not stated here. The difference matters: it decides whether the school takes a child through to the French baccalaureate or hands them on to another school halfway.
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 hallnot stated on the website
·Laboratoriesnot stated on the website
·Theatre or assembly hallnot stated on the website
✓Library
✓Catering
·School transportnot stated on the website
·Boardingnot stated on the website
Campus: Two sites. The main one is Bosch i Gimpera 6-10 in Pedralbes: the primary school, the collège, the lycée and the infirmary in the ground-floor hall. The kindergarten stands as a separate building at Carrer de Munner 5, near the Paseo de la Bonanova, fifteen classes, with its own library, which the school calls the hub of its linguistic and cultural resources, and its own music specialist. The canteen is optional and is booked for one to four days a week for a whole term; the menus are drawn up by the caterer's dietician, the school doctor and the management, children up to grade 1 are served at table and from grade 2 it is self-service.
Clubs and activities (5): High school drama studio · Middle school drama studio · Art · Web radio · Art workshops
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
It is a directly managed AEFE school, and this is how it describes its staff: mostly tenured teachers of the French education ministry, seconded to the school. Spanish and Catalan at every stage are taught by teachers with Spanish credentials. Named individually are two school-life advisers (CPE) - Núria Fajas for the middle stage and Elisabeth Guiboud Ribaud for the senior stage - two fine arts teachers and the health service. The school publishes no number of teachers, no qualifications and no pupil-teacher ratio.
Safety and wellbeing from the school's official website
·CCTVnot stated on the website
·Security staffnot stated on the website
·Access controlnot stated on the website
✓Nurse or medical room
✓Counsellor
·Child protection policynot stated on the website
·Staff trainingnot stated on the website
·Anti-bullying policynot stated on the website
The infirmary is on the ground floor of the main building, in the entrance hall, and is open Monday to Friday from 8:00 to 18:00 without a break. The service has a school doctor, Dr Dolors Orta (8:30 to 15:00), and two nurses, Patricia Delfolly and Silvia Dussart, whose shifts cover the whole day. It treats pupils, decides on a return to class, going home or a hospital referral, administers medicines under written parental authorisation, runs compulsory screenings in grades 1 and 6, vaccination campaigns, communicable-disease monitoring and individual care plans for chronic conditions. Individual psychological attention is given to a pupil on referral by the administration, the teachers, the school-life adviser, the parents or the pupil themselves. Prevention runs as separate programmes by stage: nutrition, puberty, substance abuse, bullying, health and relationships.
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 data65 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 data73 "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