We arrived after enrolment closed. How do I get my child into school?

Your child has the right to free basic education because they are under 16 and living in Spain. That is article 9.1 of Ley Orgánica 4/2000, it is a right and a duty at the same time, and it does not depend on your papers or on your registration being finished. So do not wait. Apply for admission outside the ordinary enrolment period using the Department of Education’s online form: there is a route for exactly this situation, it runs all year, and requests are dealt with in order of arrival.

Does this apply to me

Yes, if your child has not been at a school in Catalonia before, or you need to change schools within Barcelona and could not do it in the normal round. Your immigration status does not stop your child being schooled, and the official documentation rules say so plainly: where a foreign pupil’s identity or parentage cannot be evidenced the usual way, it can exceptionally be evidenced with an identity document, the family book from your country of origin, or whatever alternative documentation you can provide, which the head teacher then assesses. Compulsory education runs from 6 to 16, though children commonly start at 3, in the year called I3.

What it costs

Applying costs nothing.

You can get most of that paid: the beca menjador, the school meal grant, is 70% as standard and up to 100% in extraordinary cases, for pupils from I3 to fourth-year ESO at state and state-subsidised schools whose family income is below the thresholds. It is assessed on your 2025 income.

What the department asks for

Scan or photograph both sides of each document onto the phone or computer you will use for the form.

• A birth registration certificate or llibre de família, the family book, or other proof of parentage.
• Your passport — a passport, or an identity document from an EU member state, is the case where the document must always be attached.
• Your address, checked automatically against the padrón (Barcelona City Council’s register of residents); if that check fails, attach a volant de convivència, the council certificate showing your address and who lives with you. That is what the padrón is for here — it feeds the enrolment check, it does not create the right to a place.
• If the child has been at school in Catalonia since 2015-16, their RALC pupil identifier.
• For a place at a special-education school, the EAP psycho-pedagogical report.

Where to go, and how to book

Apply on the electronic form reached from edubcn.cat, under alumnado y familia, trámites, escolarización. If you cannot fill in the form, or you do not have the means to, an agent from the Consorci d’Educació de Barcelona will help you — book a cita previa (advance appointment). There are three schooling offices for the whole city, and only three:

They open Monday, Wednesday and Friday 08:30–14:00, Tuesday and Thursday 08:30–17:00, and in June and July Monday to Friday 08:30–14:00. They are closed in August and during the Easter and Christmas school holidays.

For information by phone, 010 is open 07:00 to 23:00 and is free from within the Barcelona metropolitan area; 012 is the Generalitat’s line, open 08:00 to 22:00, and the Generalitat does not publish a call cost for it.

The meal grant is applied for through your child’s school, which is also where you hand in the supporting documents.

How long it takes

There is no fixed number of days, which is why applying early in the term matters more than waiting for a perfect application.

What happens next

You are offered a place, and you must take it up within two weeks. If your child does not start at the school within two weeks of term beginning, or of the place being assigned, the place is lost. Then apply for the meal grant at the school.

Deadlines that are live right now, checked 9 Sep 2026

The beca menjador for 2026-27 has five windows.

What goes wrong

Three things.

• 1. Waiting until you have “all the papers”. Your child does not need a NIE (Número de Identidad de Extranjero, the foreigner identification number) to be schooled, and missing documents can be substituted. Applying late costs you a place; applying without a document costs you a conversation with the head teacher.
• 2. Assuming the meal grant is automatic. It is not: it is a separate application, through the school, in one of five fixed windows, and one of them is open now.
• 3. Requesting a change of school without proof. It is refused unless you can prove one of three things — that you have moved to another municipality or, within Barcelona, another district; that the change is because of gender violence or bullying; or that a fostering measure has begun. Any other reason is rejected.

Useful words

Read next

• How do I register on the padrón? Do I need papers? — where the volant de convivència comes from, and it is free.
• I have just arrived in Barcelona. What do I do first? — the order to do things in, with schooling in it.
• What is 010, and what can it actually do for me? — the free line for schooling information and office hours.

Official source

Consorci d’Educació de Barcelona, “Escolarización”, at edubcn.cat, for the out-of-period admission route, the assignment dates and the two-week rule. The meal grant, its prices and its five windows are on the same site under ayudas de comedor escolar. The right to schooling is article 9.1 of Ley Orgánica 4/2000, at boe.es.