← Back to homeSchool Year Abroad - Spain
Zaragoza, Spain · Private
Illustration · Zaragoza
School Year Abroad - Spain is the Spanish campus of the American organisation School Year Abroad, which has been running for more than sixty years and has three campuses: in France, in Italy and in Spain. The school is not built like an ordinary international school: a pupil arrives from their own American school for a year or a semester, lives with a family in Zaragoza and attends lessons at the campus in the centre of town, walking or taking public transport. It takes senior pupils - grades ten, eleven and twelve - and requires Spanish at level two or above. There are six courses, and four of them are taught in Spanish: the language itself, "experiential Spanish" and two electives, while English and mathematics stay in English. The electives are the school's own and tied to the country: art history with museum visits, environmental science with fieldwork, macroeconomics, and "Spain: a global political history". The year ends with a capstone project in experiential Spanish, and the school lists its own topics: the fishing culture of the Ebro, local government, flamenco, the economics of pork. The school year includes academic travel, field study and extracurriculars - the school writes separately about ballet. The Spanish campus has 87 pupils, and the staff is published by name: the director, six teachers and seven administrators and coordinators. The school awards no diploma of its own: credits transfer back to the school the pupil came from - a full credit per course on the yearlong programme and a half on the semester one.
Key facts
Programmes
American programme
Languages of instruction
Spanish, English
About the fees The school states its fee in US dollars, one sum for all three branches: for the 2026-2027 school year 65700 dollars for the yearlong programme and 36400 dollars for the semester programme. The sum is set every February by the board of trustees. The fee covers lessons and academic counselling, school trips with travel, meals and lodging, living with a host family with transport to school and lunch on school days, support every day of the school year including weekends and holidays, and accident and illness insurance. Payment can be made in one or two instalments or through the FACTS plan - ten interest-free payments for the year or five for the semester.
Admissions The school is built entirely on pupils from abroad: high school students come to Zaragoza for a year or a semester from about 100 public and private schools in the United States, around two thirds of them from independent schools; the 2027 intake came from 93 schools. Rising sophomores, juniors and seniors apply for the yearlong programme; for a semester, sophomores and juniors for autumn and spring, seniors for autumn only. For Spain two years of Spanish are required, fluency is not expected. Applications go through the mySYA portal: the student information form and a non-refundable application fee, one personal essay, three teacher recommendations (advisor, language teacher and English teacher), a transcript with grades through the autumn marking period and an interview with an SYA representative; for sophomores also a phone interview of one parent with the vice president for enrolment. Applications for the 2027-2028 programmes are accepted until 11 February 2027.
Stages and year groups Grades grades 10-12, senior pupils for a year or a semester. The programme runs for a year or a semester. The yearlong one for 2026-2027 is announced as departure on 1 September 2026 and return on 27 May 2027. There are six courses; the yearlong programme gives a full credit for each, the semester one a half. Spain requires Spanish at level two or above.
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 →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
The school publishes nothing about where its leavers go: no share going on to university, no exam results, no list of universities.
Facilities
The school does not describe its premises on its website.
Teaching staff from the school's official website
✓Teachers listed by name14 names
·Teacher qualificationsnot stated
·Number of teachersthe school does not say
·Students per teacher or class sizenot stated
The staff of the Spanish campus is published by name: the director; teachers of history and political science, environmental science, Spanish language (two), art history, English and mathematics; and an instructional technology coordinator, an extracurricular coordinator, an administrative assistant, a financial administrator, a college counselling liaison, a student life coordinator and a summer programme coordinator. The school does not list qualifications or degrees person by person; across all three campuses together it says that 80 per cent of its faculty hold advanced degrees and that some of the team have guided pupils for over a quarter of a century. It does not state a pupil-teacher ratio or class sizes.
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%)90 Teaching staff (10%) scored on disclosed data85 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