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Public or Concertado School in Valencia: What Actually Decides Your Child's Place

Last updated: 1 October 2026 · by Khris Rueda, Founder of Spainlander

Before you set a date

Is your landing date realistic?

Most families move to Valencia three months later than they planned, because they find out about the school calendar too late. Five questions, thirty seconds, and you will know whether your date works.

Run the Readiness Check

Last updated: October 2026. Every rule in this article carries the article number it comes from, so you can check it yourself.

Most of what families are told about getting a school place in Valencia is wrong in the same direction: it makes the paperwork sound like the hard part, and the calendar sound flexible.

It is the other way round. The paperwork is more forgiving than you think. The calendar is not forgiving at all.

Here is what the regulation actually says.

1. You do not need a padrón to apply for a school place

This is the single most common piece of misinformation, and we have repeated it ourselves.

Orden 8/2024, article 31.1, on how you prove your address:

*"El domicilio familiar se acreditará mediante la presentación del DNI del representante legal del alumno o alumna y de un recibo reciente de agua, luz o teléfono o contrato de alquiler. Si existiera discrepancia entre los domicilios que figuren en los citados documentos se podrá requerir un certificado de residencia librado por el ayuntamiento. En el caso de que se presente un contrato de alquiler, deberá acreditarse que se ha efectuado el correspondiente depósito de fianza (modelo 805 o 806)."*

Read it twice. The padrón certificate appears only as something the administration may ask for if your documents disagree with each other. It is a tie-breaker, not a requirement.

So there are four ways to arrive at the application, in descending order of how solid they are:

1. A recent utility bill. Water, electricity or telephone, plus the ID of the parent applying. The strongest and the simplest.

2. A rental contract with the deposit lodged. The lease alone is not enough: the fianza must have been deposited with the regional tax office using form 805 or 806. There is no minimum time you must have held the lease. This is the route that matters most for a family who has not moved yet.

3. A padrón certificate. Works, and is what everyone assumes you need. It is simply not the only door.

4. Nothing, and arrive after the window. This is a real option with real consequences, and we cover it in section 6.

One more thing worth knowing: the administration does check some of your claims automatically. Income is requested directly from the national tax agency (article 26.4 of Decreto 48/2024) and the regional inclusion benefit is cross-checked between departments. There is no equivalent automatic check against the padrón for your address. The word padrón does not appear once in the 2026 admission resolution in connection with proving where you live.

But you cannot register on the padrón before you arrive

If you do go the padrón route, know its limit.

Ley 7/1985, article 15: "Toda persona que viva en España está obligada a inscribirse en el Padrón del municipio en el que resida habitualmente."

Present tense. You register because you already live there. There is no such thing as registering in advance from abroad.

What you do not need is a residence permit. LO 4/2000, article 6.3: "Los Ayuntamientos incorporarán al padrón a los extranjeros que tengan su domicilio habitual en el municipio." No mention of status.

And the national instructions to town halls say it explicitly. Resolución of 17 February 2020, section 2.1:

"El objetivo de exigir documentación identificativa al solicitar la inscripción en el Padrón es exclusivamente comprobar que los datos de identificación son correctos, con independencia de la situación legal del extranjero en España. Al Ayuntamiento no le corresponde realizar ningún control sobre la legalidad o ilegalidad de la residencia en territorio español de ninguno de sus vecinos."

A valid passport is enough. The Valencia city council puts it in its own welcome document in one line: "No es necesario tener permiso de residencia para empadronarse."

2. The obstacle nobody mentions: with a passport only, you cannot apply online

This is the rule that decides whether your plan is possible, and it is buried in an annex.

Resolución of 25 February 2026, point Decimotercero.7:

"Los solicitantes de nacionalidad extranjera que únicamente dispongan de pasaporte u otro documento distinto del NIE, tarjeta de extranjero, permiso de residencia o certificado de registro de ciudadanía de la Unión Europea como documento de identificación, deberán acudir al centro en el que soliciten plaza como primera opción, que será habilitado como punto de atención a los usuarios."

The application is otherwise entirely online, through a personal access key you obtain with a Spanish NIE, a digital certificate or Cl@ve. If you hold none of those, the regulation gives you exactly one route: walk into your first-choice school in person.

There is no proxy in the text. No postal route. No video identification. The law guarantees you participate "en las mismas condiciones que el resto de los solicitantes", so you lose nothing in the scoring. But a parent, legal guardian or legal representative has to be standing in Spain (point Decimotercero.4 of the same resolution): not a cousin, not a friend.

And the window is short. In 2026 the ordinary round for Infant and Primary ran from 7 to 18 May. In 2025, from 6 to 14 May. Roughly ten days, in the first half of May.

If you are planning to land in June, read that sentence again.

3. Nobody knows whether a school has room. Not even the school

Families ask us which schools have places. It is the right question and it has no answer before spring.

Orden 8/2024, article 26.8:

"las vacantes que se ofrecen corresponden a los puestos escolares que se prevé que no estarán ocupados en el curso escolar para el que se convoca el proceso de admisión y están condicionadas a las posibles bajas y altas en los centros y a los resultados de la evaluación."

A forecast, conditional on who leaves, who arrives, and who repeats a year. Schools upload that data in April. The initial vacancies are published the day before the application window opens, then revised twice more.

The one exception is the entry year of Infant education, three-year-olds, where the whole cohort is new and the places are simply the capacity of the class.

For everything else, including the early years of Primary that most relocating families need, the number does not exist until April. Anyone who tells you in November that a school has a place for the following September is guessing.

What you can get, and what is worth getting, is the school's own answer to a different question: how do your places usually go? Some will tell you they fill in first choice every year. Some will tell you they normally have room. That is a real signal, and it is the one we collect.

4. What housing actually does for you, and what it does not

This is where most families lose money.

The scoring is fixed and published. Decreto 48/2024 sets it out:

What counts Points Article
A sibling already enrolled at that school 15 art. 24.1
Home or workplace inside the school's catchment area 10 art. 25.1.a
Home or workplace in a bordering area 5 art. 25.1.b
Large-family status (general / special) 5 / 7 art. 29
Single-parent family (general / special) 5 / 7 art. 31.1
Child's disability (33-64% / 65%+) 4 / 7 art. 32.1
Income, on a sliding scale 4 to 7 art. 26.3

Now the part that surprises people.

The catchment area is the entire municipality by default. Article 6.1: "Con carácter general, las áreas de influencia se establecerán siguiendo el principio de distrito único de localidad, de manera que abarcarán todo el término de un municipio." Only towns that the regional education office has explicitly subdivided have sub-zones, and those are the large cities.

So in most towns, renting on the street next to the school earns you exactly the same ten points as renting on the far edge of the same town. Paying a premium for the flat opposite the school gate buys you a shorter walk and nothing else.

Two more things that change how you plan:

Your workplace counts the same as your home, and they are alternatives, not additions (articles 22.2 and 25.1). One criterion, one score.

And the heaviest single factor is not the house at all. It is a sibling. Fifteen points, against ten for where you live. If one of your children gets into a school, the second is close to automatic. There is even a specific rule (article 33) for siblings applying together for the first time: if one gets a place, the others are given the sibling score.

The consequence: never choose a town with one school

Put those two facts together. Your address earns ten points at every public school in the municipality. So:

  • In a town with one public school, those ten points are worth nothing if that school is full. Your child is assigned somewhere else, possibly in the next town, and the lease you signed is now in the wrong place.
  • In a town with three or more, the same ten points work at all of them. If one is full, you have somewhere to fall.

Coastal villages look wonderful on a viewing trip. Count the schools before you count the bedrooms.

5. Public and concertado are the same bet. Only private is different

Families often assume concertado is a middle path that sidesteps the queue. It is not.

Both public and concertado schools are sostenidos con fondos públicos, and both are governed by the same Decreto 48/2024. Same round, same calendar, same scoring, same uncertainty about places.

The only schools outside the system are fully private ones. They have no admission round. You enrol when you pay, at any point in the year.

That is the actual trade, and it is worth stating plainly:

Public is free and concertado is cheap. Both cost you control over the date. Private costs money and gives you the date back.

If your move is tied to a fixed arrival month that falls outside the spring round, that sentence is your whole decision.

6. If you arrive after the window: what happens, exactly

You will not be left without a school. You will very likely not get the one you wanted.

Your child has a legal right to a free place. Decreto 48/2024 article 2.2 guarantees "un puesto escolar gratuito en su propio municipio o zona de escolarización establecida", and the national education act (LOE, article 78.1) is stronger still: "Dicha incorporación se garantizará, en todo caso, en la edad de escolarización obligatoria."

Before term starts, there is a second window in July. Infant and Primary have an extraordinary phase for families who "precise plaza de manera sobrevenida y no haya podido presentar la solicitud en la fase ordinaria" (Orden 8/2024, article 55.1). Same scoring, but only for the places left over after the ordinary round (article 55.3). In 2026 applications ran from 13 to 16 July, with results on the 23rd and enrolment from 23 to 27 July (Resolución of 25 February 2026, Annex IV). With a passport only, it is still in person at the school. If you land in June, this is your real window.

Where you apply changes. Once term has begun, applications go to the Municipal Schooling Commission, not to the school. That commission exists in every municipality with more than one publicly funded school, and one of its listed duties (Decreto 48/2024, article 14.1.e) is "asignar puesto escolar al alumnado que no disponga de plaza tras la participación en el proceso de admisión, así como a aquel que se escolarice de forma sobrevenida durante el curso escolar."

Arriving from abroad is a recognised reason for urgency. Article 60.2 of Orden 8/2024 lists "incorporación tardía al sistema educativo" and "traslado de residencia de la unidad familiar procedente de otra localidad" among the circumstances that trigger immediate placement.

And there is physical room to absorb you. Decreto 48/2024 article 43 allows the regional education office to raise the class limit by up to 10% precisely for late arrivals. Primary classes cap at 25, so that means up to 27.

One date to write down: the waiting lists from the ordinary round expire on 30 September (article 61.3 of Orden 8/2024). After that, everything goes through the commission.

So the honest summary: a place, yes. The place you chose, no. The commission decides, and it decides on what is left.

7. The language question, which foreign families underestimate

In the Comunitat Valenciana, public and concertado schools teach part of the week in Valencian. How much varies significantly from one school to the next, and from one stage to the next within the same school. Each school publishes its own language plan.

Since the Ley 1/2024 de libertad educativa came into force, families express a language preference as part of the admission process itself, and those preferences are used to determine each school's base language.

For a six or seven-year-old arriving from abroad, this is not a detail. It is the difference between learning one new language and learning two at the same time. Two schools four kilometres apart can be very different places for that child.

Check the language plan for the stage your child enters, not the school's general description.

8. What this means if you are planning a move

Put the rules together and the sequence is not the one most families use.

Most families start with the town. The regulation says the town is an output, not an input:

  1. Which year group does each child enter? Set by birth year. This decides everything downstream, because places are allocated by year group and a school with room in one year can be full in the next.
  2. Which schools fit them? Language mix at their stage, distance, size, whether they take children mid-cycle.
  3. Which municipalities contain those schools, and do they have enough of them to give you a fallback?
  4. Then rent, anywhere inside that municipality, because the ten points are the same across it.
  5. And work backwards from the May window, not from your arrival month.

Choose the town first and you can end up with a beautiful lease next to a school that has been full since April.

Sources

Everything above comes from published regulation. The links go to the official texts, not to summaries.

What we will not tell you

The 2027-28 calendar. It is not published. The regional government issues it between February and March of the year of the process. Anyone giving you 2027 dates today is extrapolating, and so are we: the two published rounds fell in the first half of May.

Whether a specific school will have a place. See section 3. The data does not exist yet.

What a particular town hall will ask you for. The rules are set nationally and regionally but applied locally, and offices interpret them differently. Two municipalities twenty minutes apart will ask for different documents for the same procedure. What we give our clients is what each office told us, with the date we asked, and what has not been confirmed is marked unconfirmed rather than presented as fact.

Spainlander helps international families work out which schools fit their children, which towns put them inside the catchment, and what the calendar demands of them, before they sign a lease. If you are planning a move and want the version of this that applies to your family rather than to everyone, that is what The Shortlist is.

Before you set a date

Is your landing date realistic?

Most families move to Valencia three months later than they planned, because they find out about the school calendar too late. Five questions, thirty seconds, and you will know whether your date works.

Run the Readiness Check

Spainlander plans

Spainlander plans Valencia moves for international families, sequenced around the school decision. Founded by Khris Rueda after moving from Canada in 2022. Three plans, each for up to two children:

  • The Shortlist, €989

    In seven days you know which education route fits your children, which schools are worth an application, and which dates govern your arrival.

    See what a Shortlist looks like
  • The Application, €2,450

    Your school decision becomes applications that are prepared properly, submitted with you inside the window, and followed until there is an answer.

  • The Landing, €6,900

    We take responsibility for coordinating your school, housing, administrative and arrival workflow, so your first weeks run on a sequence instead of on your evenings.

Final price. Taxes included where they apply.

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