← Back to homeOporto British School
Porto, Portugal · est. 1894 · Private
Illustration · Porto
The oldest British school in Portugal: it opened on 2 July 1894 with 11 British boys under Reverend William Slyman Picken. Non-British boys were admitted from 1902 and girls from 1914. The building in Foz do Douro was rented at first and bought in 1922, and it is still part of the school. The school passed a hundred pupils only after the Second World War, added secondary education with GCE examinations in the mid-1950s, a parallel Portuguese curriculum in the early 1960s and IB Diploma courses in the early 1990s. It now has 577 pupils of 30 nationalities, aged 3 to 18. The language of lessons is English: the school itself says everything but Modern Foreign Languages and Portuguese History is taught in English, and all pages for parents and pupils, the admissions rules and the fee schedule are written in English. Portuguese is compulsory as a first or a foreign language, and French and Spanish are also taught. Secondary ends with IGCSE in Forms 9-10 and the IB Diploma in Forms 11-12, and the Cambridge ICE certificate is offered. The campus is tight and the school counts that as a strength: pupils of all ages meet, and the move from one stage to the next happens without a break.
Key facts
Tuition
≈ $11 071–20 411 a year
9 530–17 570 EUR
Programmes
IB · DP · Cambridge · IGCSE
Admits from
3 years · Pre-School
Languages of instruction
English
Languages taught
Portuguese, French, Spanish
About the fees Fees for the 2026/2027 school year: Pre-Prep, Prep and Reception 9530 euros a year, primary Forms 1-5 11105 euros, Forms 6-8 12885 euros, Forms 9-10 15315 euros, Forms 11-12 17570 euros. Payment can be termly or monthly: 3275 to 6030 euros a term and 1025 to 1875 euros a month. A third child in the family has a 25% discount, a fourth and further children 50%.
Admissions The school reviews applications for any year group irrespective of ethnicity, gender or religion. Preference goes to children who have English as a first language or who have attended a school where the teaching language is English, children who hold a British passport, children of former pupils, and children with a sibling in the school. Lessons are in English in everything but Modern Foreign Languages and Portuguese History, so the school considers whether a child can access the curriculum in English, and it offers English as an additional language support. Admission includes an interview, reports from the previous school and an age-appropriate adaptive cognitive reasoning assessment. Applications are accepted throughout the school year and places open up mid-year for families relocating to Porto, except in the two IB Diploma years.
Stages and year groups Grades Pre-Prep, Prep and Reception, Forms 1-5 (primary), Forms 6-8, Forms 9-10 (IGCSE), Forms 11-12 (IB Diploma). Pre-Prep takes children who turn three before December of the year they join. Uniform is worn until Form 10 inclusive.
Address Rua da Cerca, 338, 4150-201 Porto
Accreditations and programmes verified against official registries
IB · DP · authorised programmeCIS · accreditationCOBIS · accreditationBSO · accreditationCambridge · IGCSE · 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 →CISCouncil of International Schools
It accredits international schools and is a paying association at the same time. It examines governance and ownership, the curriculum, teaching, student wellbeing, staff and premises; a team of volunteers from other CIS accredited schools visits the school. Membership and accreditation are different things here, and schools confuse them more often than anything else.
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 →COBISCouncil of British International Schools
An association of British schools abroad with a quality inspection of its own. It has nine membership categories, and the word "accredited" appears in seven of them, although COBIS does its own inspection in one: in the rest it recognises an accreditation granted by somebody else.
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 →BSOBritish government inspection of schools overseas
A scheme of the UK Department for Education: a school abroad is inspected against the standards for independent schools in England, including safeguarding and the standards for boarding. The inspections are done by independent inspectorates approved by the department, and the inspectorates themselves are monitored annually by Ofsted. The reports are published in full on the government website.
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 →CambridgeCambridge International Education
Part of the University of Cambridge. It allows a school to teach the Cambridge programmes and to enter pupils for the exams. There are four stages and they are authorised separately: primary, lower secondary, IGCSE and A Level. If the stages are known they are named in the line below; if that line is missing, the school does not publish them, and the Cambridge registry does not show stages either - it gives only the name of the centre, the country and whether private candidates are accepted. Cambridge calls what it does registration rather than accreditation, and the network holds about ten thousand schools.
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: IGCSE (ages 14-16). IGCSE means exams at around Year 10 or 11, the British counterpart of a lower secondary leaving certificate.
Register to check for yourself, and the full guide →Exams and destinations from the school's official website
Where leavers go: University of Cambridge · University of Oxford · Imperial College London · London School of Economics and Political Science · University of Edinburgh · University College London · University of Warwick · University of Bristol · Universidade Catolica Portuguesa · Universidade do Porto · Georgetown University · McGill University
and others, 13 universities in the school's list in allThe school lists more than fifty universities its leavers have entered over ten years, in the United Kingdom, Portugal and North America.
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
·Librarynot stated on the website
·Cateringnot stated on the website
·School transportnot stated on the website
·Boardingnot stated on the website
Campus: A compact campus in the Foz do Douro district, on a hilltop above the mouth of the Douro and the Atlantic, 300 metres from the beach. The original building holds secondary classrooms and a garden, the Primary building holds the early years and primary classrooms, the library and an IT room, the Farn building holds secondary classrooms, the art room and a second IT room, Blue House holds the offices, and Teage Hall holds the primary and secondary library, music rooms and the drama and performance space; there is a football field and a playground. The school is building a new primary building with 16 classrooms, a building with a dining hall and science labs, and new indoor and outdoor sports facilities for basketball, volleyball and football.
Clubs and activities: Tennis · Football · Rugby · Volleyball · Running · Karate · Little Kickers · Ballet · Hip Hop · Yoga · Drama · School Orchestra · School Band · OBS Choir · Art Club · Portuguese Art Club · Books Illustration · Creative Illustration · Origami Club · Craft Club · Escola das Artes · Chess · Science Club · Happy Code · The Inventors · Robotic Academy · Y Science · English Homework · Duke of Edinburgh Award
Teaching staff from the school's official website
·Teachers listed by namenot published
✓Teacher qualifications
·Number of teachersthe school does not say
✓Students per teacher or class sizein the key facts above
What the listings show: The school describes its teachers as dedicated professionals experienced in their specialist areas and lists no degrees or certificates.
Pre-Prep classes hold no more than 16 children, all other year groups up to 20. The average class is 16 pupils.
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 roomnot stated on the website
·Counsellornot stated on the website
✓Child protection policy
✓Staff training
·Anti-bullying policynot stated on the website
The school has a dedicated and highly trained safeguarding team, and all staff receive safeguarding training every year. There is a child protection and safeguarding policy as a separate document and a whistleblowing channel. Staff watch for academic pressure, eating disorders and mental health concerns.
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%)84 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 data65 Accreditation and verifiability (10%)100 Teaching staff (10%) scored on disclosed data55 Facilities (10%) scored on disclosed data60 Clubs and activities (8%) scored on disclosed data78 "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