The Guide
Sat, 16 May 2026

Cities / Barcelona / International Rural School

International Rural School

Small British school in Llinars del Vallès, set in woodland on the edge of the village. BSO-accredited, English National Curriculum, Cambridge IGCSE and A-Levels, ages 3 to 18. Class sizes capped at 16.


Ages
3 to 16

Small British school in Llinars del Vallès, set in woodland on the edge of the village. BSO-accredited, English National Curriculum, Cambridge IGCSE and A-Levels, ages 3 to 18. Class sizes capped at 16.

The pitch is the setting and the size: a forest campus with a vegetable garden, on-site cooking, a school bus from the surrounding villages, and small classes that allow the kind of project-led teaching the school links to Decroly, Dewey and Freinet. Monthly trips into Barcelona for museums and cultural visits sit alongside the academic programme.

BSO inspection in 2024 confirmed the British compliance basics and the school is registered with the Department for Education's get-information-schools service. The honest read for incoming families is that this is a young, founder-led school with a small senior cohort, not a settled British school in the BSB or BIC mould. Independent feedback is sparse and split, with strong warmth on individual teachers and one consistent flag about commercial pressure. Fee transparency is also limited compared with the larger Barcelona internationals.


  • The Llinars del Vallès campus is small, forest-set, and built around English National Curriculum delivery with EYFS through A-Levels. Online reviews are split.
  • Aggregated parent ratings on Spanish parent trackers cluster around 4.7-5.0 across a small sample, with families praising the rural setting, music-led pedagogy, and a teacher-to-student ratio of roughly one to twelve to fifteen.
  • A minority of reviews are sharply critical. One reviewer wrote that the principal sees students "as money machines" and flagged duty-of-care and staff support as weak points.
  • Other negative reviews cite teaching consistency, staff turnover, and food service quality.
  • Small school, small public review pool, polarised signal.

Accreditations

  • British Schools Overseas (DfE) 01

Disseminat, 133, 08450 Llinars del Vallès, Barcelona, Spain

School website