Colegio Calasanz. Fundación Escolapias Montal

The Fundación Escolapias Montal Colegio Calasanz is located in a centric street of Alcalá de Henares, a World Heritage City close to Madrid.  Our city is well known because it is the place where Cervantes, the writer of Don Quixote de la Mancha, was born, but also  because of its remarkable ancient University, which was founded in the XVth century. Our school consists of 1003 students and 74 teachers. 

Our school belongs to a Catholic Congregation (Fundación Escolapias Montal)  and it was founded 110 years ago by “Escolapias Congregation”. It  is very well appreciated in our city, especially by those who have studied with us. 
Regarding its funding, the Foundation is a charter school, which means that all the compulsory levels, apart from the Bachillerato level, are funded by the Education Office. This means that students do not pay tuition fees. Only Bachillerato students pay a fee.  In spite of being a Catholic-religious school, we do not distinguish between Catholic and non-Catholic students. We accept everyone who wants to join us, and treat everyone equally.

Our students belong to a middle-low economical range.  Nowadays, there are a lot of families who have economic problems. This is why we promote solidarity in our school and every year we collect food, money and clothes to help families in need.

Our school is an integrated one. We offer all the official stages of education prior to University studies: Pre-Primary level (3-6), Primary level (6-12), Compulsory Secondary Education level (12-16), High School level (Bachillerato) (16-18) and  Vocational Training (over 16). We also have “Aula de Enlace”, which is intended for newcomers who do not speak Spanish. We are not a specialized school (apart from Vocational Training) but a general education school. There are around 1000 enrolled students in our school. 

We are considered to be well valuated due to our concern for diversity, mostly in the compulsory levels.  We try to involve our students in an inclusive environment. Thus, we are very concerned with gifted students as well as those who have special education needs. Moreover, we are introducing collaborative learning methodologies.

We are also deeply involved in protecting the environment and therefore we have developed a recycling program. This way we try both to educate our students as well as make their families aware of the environmental problem.

Furthermore, we are very much concerned about European Dimension and therefore we have been involved in Socrates and Comenius Projects since 2002. We think this kind of projects help to make broad-minded people.  We have also carried out student exchanges in France, Holland, Bulgaria and United Kingdom.  We have gone to Geneva to visit the CERN and we arrange trips to European cities like Rome or Paris every year.

We would eventually like to become a bilingual Spanish- English School. Our students start studying English since the age of 3, but we do not teach any subjects in English as yet. We are involved with an EFQM quality system, nevertheless.

Although students of a wide range of ages attend our school, all the teachers and pedagogical team move in the same direction, which mean that whenever we are working on a European project all the students and teachers at our school get involved in it. Therefore, in spite of the fact that there may be a target group in charge of the project, the rest of the students will take advantage of the products and the activities developed, since our main goal is to improve the learning of mathematics in all the stages.