Madrid, October 1, 2025 – CICAE (Asociación de Colegios Privados e Independientes – Círculo de Calidad Educativa) presented today the tenth edition of the Study of Fees and Prices in Subsidized Schools. The conclusions are clear: 83% of the schools visited charge a basic educational fee to families and in 69% of the cases there is no voluntariness, violating the right of families to free compulsory education supported by public funds.
The study reflects, in an objective and documented manner, the explanations that the charter schools offer to families during the information process, including the justifications for the fees, the obligatory nature of the fees, the consequences in case of non-payment and the documentation provided.
Not all subsidized schools are the same: Differences by ownership of the schools
The analysis shows significant differences according to the corporate type of the schools:
- Commercially owned centers are the ones that charge the highest fees, with an average of 114 €/month.
- On the other hand, religious congregations have the lowest contributions, with an average of 74.43 €/month.
- Corporations, cooperatives and limited liability companies concentrate the highest cases of mandatory and exclusion, reaching 88% in the case of corporations.
Exclusion and pressure on families
The report detects that 11% of children suffer exclusion if their families do not pay the fee, a percentage that rises to 29% of the centers visited in the Community of Madrid.
Some examples of the arguments that schools state in the interview if families do not pay these fees:
- Los niños tendrían que entrar más tarde, salir antes o ser apartados en aulas separadas:
- “It would go to a separate classroom, but all the families are betting on these activities.”
- “The child would come in one hour later (9.45) or leave one hour earlier (15.50), “The children would have to go home or pay the custody service (189€/month).”
- They may not participate in complementary activities that are “essential” to the educational project:
- “The name voluntary contribution is only a name because it is mandatory. A lot of extra classes and services are given and you have to pay for them.”
- “If the student did not pay the fee, he/she would not be able to attend a series of complementary activities to develop the whole educational project of the center.“
Highest and average quotas by autonomous communities
- Catalonia leads once again this year in terms of maximum fees, with €1,100 per month per student, €11,000 per year and more than half of its schools charge fees of more than €246 per month.
- In the Valencian Community, the maximum registered fee amounts to 450 €/month.
- In the Community of Madrid, the maximum fee is €277/month, with an increasing average of €135.90/month. Sixty-six percent of the schools visited charge more than €1,500 per year in base fees alone.
- In the Basque Country, 100% of the schools visited charge a basic educational fee, with complementary contributions in some cooperatives exceeding €800 per year.
Between fees and other complementary services, going to a charter school in the C. of Madrid or Catalonia costs an annual average of between 1,300 and 2,200 euros per year, respectively. This rises to 5,700 euros per year in the C. of Madrid and 11,000 euros per year in Catalonia.
Lack of transparency of information
The report found that 25% of the schools that charge a basic education fee do not provide any pricing document or information sheet during the information process.
Accessibility to information on tuition costs has been difficult, in some cases, havingto call or visit the same school up to 5 times.
Elena Cid, general manager of CICAEAfter ten years of research and reports, I think we can safely conclude that there are many types of subsidized schools within the subsidized sector, with good and bad practices. The model of educational concerts is being distorted, because in its origin there was no lucrative interest, nor mercantile titular entities. Now, many schools charge compulsory fees to families under educational concepts, violating free education and promoting school segregation. We are especially concerned about the inaction of the administrations with the entry of investment funds in education supported with public funds”.
Acquisition of charter schools by Investment Funds
Referring to the recent acquisition of the Educare group (owner of eight charter schools in the C. of Madrid) by the Swiss insurer Swiss Life, for 200 million euros, Cid adds:
“A clear example that evidences that there are centers that are nourished by a double financing, public and private, and that with it they obtain profit, is the recent sale of 8 schools of the new concerted one for 200 million euros.
Charter schools cannot become a profitable business. The legal framework establishes that charter schools must be non-profit. However, operations such as this one show a worrying drift towards the commercialization of a public service that should be free for families. No investment fund allocates 200 million euros to a project if it does not expect to obtain large profits.
7 of the 8 schools are on public land, supported entirely with public funds, with citizens’ taxes, and with the advantage of being exempt from paying municipal taxes”.
Fees for items not contemplated in the law
“On the other hand, it is difficult to understand why the educational administration allows some schools to charge for concepts that are not included in the Law, such as “educational project” or “educational supplement”. And in other cases, they change the name of these fees, we understand that in order to avoid the “control of the administration”. Where before the same fee was called “complementary activities”, now they call it “extracurricular” contributions or activities.
In addition, another serious non-compliance is the organization of complementary activities of a permanent nature within school hours*, which has as a consequence the “effective non-voluntariness”, adds the Director General. * Regulated in art. 88.1 of the Lomloe.
Special study of the Community of Madrid
Of the 455 charter schools that make up the universe of the Community of Madrid (subtracting special education schools and vocational training centers or only pre-schools), the consultant has visited 101, which represents 24% of the population, of which 100% charge a basic fee to families.
Therefore, we can confirm that the sample is statistically representative of the C. of Madrid.
Of the schools visited, Madrid is one of the communities with the strongest predominance of commercially owned schools (50.5%), showing a more entrepreneurial orientation in the management of subsidized education.
The Community of Madrid ranks third in the ranking of maximum fees (€277 per pupil per month). 66% of the schools visited in the C. of Madrid charge families more than €1,500 per year in basic fees alone.
In the last four years, there has been an upward trend in the average fee for charter schools in the Community of Madrid, reaching a new high of €135.90 this year.
Between fees and other services, attending a charter school in Madrid can cost an average of up to 5,700 euros per year/pupil.
Madrid, and related to the higher exclusion ratio (29%), is the community in which there is the greatest tendency to call complementary activities.
Change of name to Extracurricular Activities.
We also detected that 12 schools in the Community of Madrid have changed the name of the fees from complementary to extracurricular. This implies a different control and authorization by the Regional Ministry.
And that, despite the fact that the law prohibits complementary activities to be carried out during school hours, the schools that detail the timetable indicate that they are carried out during the school day (9-17h), normally between school periods: 42% (12 – 14h) and 25% (during school hours without specifying the time slot).
Special analysis of 100 web pages of the subsidized schools with the highest fees in the Community of Madrid, taking as a reference the order (published in the BOCM December 22, 2023) where they have to include in their websites: “a section, in a public area and visible from the home page, with the name “Information for families”, in which, regardless of whether they are also located elsewhere on the website, they must be easily accessible, among other contents”:
- List and price of all complementary activities, extracurricular activities and complementary services that have been carried out in the center the previous year, and those that are planned for the new year.
We have performed a verification of this mandatory requirement, obtaining the following result: 41% of the schools do not show full transparency with the costs of the schools. And 16% do not include any price information.
About the study
To carry out the study, developed by Garlic B2B, the Mystery Shopper research technique was used, with simulations of families requesting information on the prices and fees offered by charter schools for the enrollment of their children in the second cycle of kindergarten for the 2025 – 2026 academic year. It has been carried out during the months of March, April and May, providing accurate information on the perception of families during the enrollment process in charter schools in eight randomly selected autonomous communities.
Download the complete report at the following link:
