Spanish ESO/Bachillerato

Overview

Spain's school system runs compulsory secondary education, Educación Secundaria Obligatoria (ESO), followed by an optional two-year stage, Bachillerato, for students who want to continue towards university or other higher studies. Neither stage ends with a single terminal exam set by the national ministry. Under the current education law (LOMLOE), both the Graduado en ESO and the Bachiller titles are awarded from continuous, school-based assessment carried out by each student's own teaching team across the whole stage. Entry to university on top of a Bachiller title needs a separate university-entrance test, the Evaluación/Prueba de Acceso a la Universidad (EvAU/PAU), run by each autonomous community rather than by a single national exam board; that test is covered only briefly here, as background on how the two stages feed into university, not as a hosted programme of its own.

Who can apply

ESO is compulsory and free for every student enrolled in a Spanish school, normally from age 12 to 16, across four academic years. Bachillerato is optional: it normally follows directly after a student is awarded the Graduado en ESO title, at around age 16, and runs for two further years. Adults who did not complete Bachillerato at the usual age can also enrol later, including at centres for adult education, subject to each region's own admission rules.

Structure

Educación Secundaria Obligatoria (ESO)

ESO covers four academic years and is organised by subjects (materias), with the option for schools to group some subjects into broader learning areas (ámbitos) in the first two years — for example, a Sociolingüístico area that combines Lengua Castellana y Literatura with Geografía e Historia. The fourth and final year has an orientation character, preparing students either for Bachillerato or for vocational training (Formación Profesional) or working life: alongside subjects every student takes, it adds subjects chosen from set options plus further optional subjects.

Bachillerato

Bachillerato covers two academic years and is organised into four modalities: Ciencias y Tecnología, Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales (split into a Humanidades branch and a Ciencias Sociales branch), Artes (split into an Artes Plásticas, Imagen y Diseño branch and a Música y Artes Escénicas branch), and Bachillerato General, a more flexible modality added under LOMLOE for students who do not want to commit to a single specialised track. Every student takes a set of subjects common to all modalities across both years — including Lengua Castellana y Literatura I and II, a foreign language (Primera Lengua Extranjera I and II), Educación Física, Filosofía, and Historia de España — on top of subjects specific to their chosen modality and a smaller number of optional subjects set by each region.

Marking and results

Both stages are graded through continuous, formative assessment rather than one closing exam. In ESO, the teaching team judges at the end of each year, and again at the end of the stage, whether a student has met the required competencies and objectives; a student who reaches that bar is awarded the título de Graduado en Educación Secundaria Obligatoria. Promotion from one ESO year to the next is a collective decision by the teaching team, based on how many subjects a student has passed and their overall progress, not a single pass/fail test.

In Bachillerato, each subject is marked on its own, on a 0 to 10 scale without decimals; a mark below 5 is a fail in that subject. Students who fail a subject can sit a further, extraordinary assessment on dates set by their education authority. The título de Bachiller is awarded once a student has passed every subject across the two years; education authorities can also recognise an outstanding overall record with a mención honorífica or matrícula de honor at the end of the stage.

After the exam

A título de Bachiller on its own gives access to Formación Profesional de Grado Superior and to some other post-secondary routes. To apply to a Spanish public university, students additionally sit the EvAU (also called EBAU or PAU depending on the region), a separate university-entrance test organised by each autonomous community within a common state framework, not by Padhantu or by a single national exam board. From the 2025–26 academic year, a renewed PAU model aligned with the LOMLOE Bachillerato curriculum has a compulsory general phase covering five subjects and a voluntary phase of further subjects a student can sit to raise their admission score; the university admission mark combines a weighted share of the Bachillerato average with the compulsory-phase result, plus credit for the best-performing voluntary-phase subjects, with exact weightings for each degree set by the universities. Because EvAU/PAU is a distinct exam with its own regional rules, it sits outside the scope of this programme page.

Preparation tips

• Because both ESO and Bachillerato are graded across the whole year rather than in one sitting, steady performance in ordinary coursework and tests matters as much as exam-season revision.

• For Bachillerato, pick a modality (or Bachillerato General) based on the degree you eventually want to study, since some EvAU/PAU subject weightings favour specific Bachillerato subjects for specific university degrees.

• Check your own autonomous community's current EvAU/PAU structure and subject-weighting tables early in the second year of Bachillerato, since the exact subjects and weightings are set regionally and have changed with the move to the LOMLOE-aligned PAU.