At today’s online press conference, the Esade Center for Economic Policy, EsadeEcPol, presented their latest education report: “El coste de acceso a la escuela concertada en España: las cuotas que pagan las familias y sus causas” (The cost of attending charter schools in Spain: the fees families pay and the reasons why).

Lucas Gortazar, director of the education division at EsadeEcPol, explained that “what drove us to produce this report about Spain’s charter schools was the desire to research this matter thoroughly and analyze an issue that is often discussed but had not been studied in depth until now. It’s also an important time to address this matter due to the considerable changes arising from declining birth rates and student numbers.”

Almost 30% of pupils in compulsory stages of education attend charter schools – an essential part of Spain’s education system. The lack of free places curtails the right to education and increases segregation, with the ensuing adverse impact on equal opportunities and fairness. One reason for this is the existence of school fees.

A very diverse sector

According to the EsadeEcPol researcher and co-author of the report, Ángel Martínez, “the most important finding of this report is that, unlike what public discussions suggested until now, the sector is diverse rather uniform, not only in regional terms (each autonomous region has a different model of charter school) but also as regards the fees charged and the most likely reasons why schools decide to charge fees.”

According to the EsadeEcPol report on schooling, between 81% and 95% of students pay fees, with an average annual fee of between €680 and €860 per student (including families that pay no fees, regarded as a fee of €0). Thirteen per cent of students do not pay fees in the stages of education under study, whilst 18% pay very low fees (less than €20 per student per month). At the other end of the spectrum, the 10% of students paying the highest fees account for 45% of total outlay.

The fees paid also vary considerably according to family income: the 20% with the lowest income pay average annual fees of €310, whilst the 20% with the highest income pay fees slightly above €1,000.

By autonomous region, the report highlights that most of the fees (70% of the total) are paid in Catalonia, Madrid and the Basque Country, where more than 90% of the families with children in charter schools pay fees. The percentage is somewhat lower in the Region of Valencia (82% of families) and is considerably lower in Andalusia (60%). The average fee per student per year (taking only fee-paying families into account) is €1,696 in Catalonia, €1,156 in the Region of Madrid, €959 in the Basque Country, €597 in the Region of Valencia and €453 in Andalusia. Catalonia, followed by the Basque Country and Madrid, are the autonomous regions with the least variation in the fees families pay, whilst Andalusia has the most unequal distribution.

Funding varies too. According to this EsadeEcPol research, 20% of these schools have virtually zero financial results or are in the red; 50% have positive financial results of less than €300 per student per year; and 30% are clearly overfunded. The percentage of schools that charge fees ranges from 66% to 75%, depending on the stage of education. The likelihood of fees being charged, and the actual amount of the fees are higher in the schools with the worst and best funding, and lower in those with mid-range funding.

In terms of size, 90% of the largest educational establishments are fee-paying whilst the percentage falls to between 60% and 70% in small and medium schools. This explains why the percentage of fee-paying schools is lower than the percentage of families that pay fees, according to the authors of the study.

Xavier Bonal, professor of Sociology at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and co-author of the report, summarizes the proposals made by the authors of the EsadeEcPol report on the basis of its findings, “Amongst other things, we suggest better information by promoting research into the cost of each school place, auditing non-charter outlays, supervising the cost of canteens, and developing charter system mechanisms for schools that are obviously over-funded and have high fees that exceed the non-charter outlays in their accounting.”

Methodology

When producing the report “El coste de acceso a la escuela concertada en España: las cuotas que pagan las familias y sus causas” (The cost of attending charter schools in Spain: the fees families pay and the reasons why), EsadeEcPol had access, for the first time, to unique micro-data from INE, Spain’s statistics bureau, which enabled the first, in-depth analysis of fees, their distribution by families and schools, and the underlying reasons to be carried out.

The report is based on two analytical viewpoints – families and educational establishments – and two INE databases: micro-data from the EGHE survey (household expenditure on education) and the EFGEP survey (private education funding and expenditure).