Who we are
The first IB school in Spain
that has German as a teaching language!
Zürich Schule Barcelona (ZSB) is an endorsed and certified IB Primary Years Programme (PYP) and IB Middle Years Programme (MYP) school.
IB World Schools have a common philosophy based on a commitment to improving teaching and learning in educational communities characterised by diversity and inclusion. They impart high-quality international teaching programmes that share a powerful vision.
IB declaration of principles:
More information on the International Baccalaureate® (IB)
Growing together for over fifty years
Zürich Schule Barcelona is a lay private school that caters for Preschool, Primary and Secondary Education to help its students grow intellectually, emotionally and physically. It prioritises people and interpersonal relationships, fostering the sense of belonging, the participation and the involvement of the entire educational community in its project.
Given that family satisfaction with the quality of teaching is one of the Zürich Schule Barcelona’s aspirations, our Education Project must needs be dynamic. This means that its content is an object of permanent study and reflection.
Our mission as a school is to promote comprehensive education embracing an innovative and high-quality methodological practice in which students play the leading role in the learning process, and teachers are their guides and advisers. We value the uniqueness of each pupil and encourage the highest development of their potential. We are careful to ensure that our learning community (students, teachers, families and administration and maintenance staff) is respectful towards its members, its social and cultural conditions and environment. Our educational action is committed to the community’s well-being and aspires to help create a healthy peaceful world, habitable for all.
Our vision is to continue as a school that promotes excellence for all its students, starting from our own Education Project in the framework of the International Baccalaureate® (IB) community. Our commitment to society is reflected in the ongoing development of our strong points: our support of multilingualism, inclusion and innovation, and our attention to current scientific and technological progress to enable all members of our community to acquire the international mindset of IB schools.
Zürich Schule Barcelona seeks to be a high-quality private education centre. It aims to be consolidated as a learning, innovative, inclusive and intelligent school with a degree of independence that encourages the participation and shared responsibility of our entire educational community.
A learning school
Zürich Schule Barcelona is compelled to reflect on its dynamic nature, its social commitment and its need to adapt to new challenges and demands. Considering our task as teachers from this perspective requires changing our ideas on the nature and functions of the school, on the way of choosing and training our professional team, and on the organisation of schooling.
An innovative school
An innovative school is open to new proposals that improve its performance, its shared experiences and its capacity for continuous renewal.
An intelligent school
We understand an intelligent school as a complex living organism whose competent staff work as a team, engage in continuous training and have good organisation and leadership skills. This intelligence ensures the efficiency of our entire community in the interests of successful schooling.
An inclusive school
Fostering a warm, friendly and supportive atmosphere, we prioritise the well-being and learning capacity of our students, making sure their educational needs are met and involving their families in the process. We must not forget that the school welcomes a host of families from around the world.
Our collaborators
The Zürich Schule story
They were just married; he had completed his studies in engineering, and she was beginning to say her first few words in Spanish during the last years of the Franco regime, when Spain was very different to the world around them.
He was teaching engineers but, dissatisfied with master classes full of rhetorical excellence delivered at the blackboard and with impersonal teacher-pupil relationships, he soon decided to pursue other professional paths. The couple resolved to set out on a new adventure …
Full of hope, they began to leaf through all sorts of publications, underlining, cutting out, making phone calls and appointments with property owners, but all the offers were beyond their reach.
Several weeks later, they found a property on the corner of Calle Convenio and Calle Florida, where the Colegio Zürich would be founded. In precarious conditions, the couple taught small groups of students. Demand was very low. Not losing faith, they did their utmost, day after day, week after week, striving to fulfil their dream of having a better equipped building. A few years later they left the premises in the inner city and moved to 2, Calle Ifni, completely different socio-economic surroundings. The school’s internal structure began to be more clearly defined and the number of students steadily grew, but the couple’s aspirations had not yet been fulfilled: they were short of space.
A few more years would pass before they decided to take the plunge and opened a new education centre on Calle Rocabert, behind San Juan de Dios Hospital. The administrative and management services remained on Calle Ifni, along with the nursery school, while the higher courses were imparted in the new centre. But they soon realised that the new building didn’t meet all their requirements and some years later they made another decisive move, this time to 73, Avenida Pearson.
The present school is the fruit of all those years of struggle, the passion and pain of a couple who have lived for teaching. Always striving to meet society’s demands, the school was restructured on a number of occasions and eventually became a TEACHING ORGANISATION. Let’s see how this long story continues to unfold. Will any of the couple’s three children have the pride and the honour of furthering their ‘work’ along the same lines?
Alejandro Macías Roth (1969-1993)
Article written for the 1993 edition of SPICKLE (former school magazine)
What does it mean for Zürich Schule Barcelona (ZSB) to belong to the world of IB Schools?
‘A profession is created not by certificates and censures but by the existence of a substantive body of professional knowledge, as well as a mechanism for improving it, and by a genuine desire of the profession’s members to improve their practice.’ Stigler and Hiebert, The Teaching Gap, 1999.
We live in a society characterised by constant change. The importance of technology in today’s world helps us understand students of the twenty-first century. They are a part of this change, to which schools must adapt if they are to make sense of their surroundings.
Most of us were educated following a traditional teaching model, often based on behaviourism, that told us what we had to do and how to do it. This model left little room for improvisation, imagination or creativity. At Zürich Schule Barcelona we’ve been supporting constructivism in teaching for more than fifty years and we’ve always defended our methodology. It’s not a question of erasing everything that’s been done so far, but to be continuously revising and improving it.
Students must explore a series of themes that represent shared human experiences we call 'key common aspects'.
The six transdisciplinary themes on which the IB Primary Years Programme (PYP) is based study and analyse these common aspects, and refer to the concepts and skills of traditional teaching areas explored in a way that transcends disciplines, becoming a transdisciplinary process of teaching and learning. PYP students are taught to take charge of their own learning, and their teachers help increase their motivation and self-confidence.
The way in which teachers organise new experiences and support students' ideas on these new experiences is essential in knowledge acquisition, comprehension skills and concept formation. Teachers must help students grasp abstract concepts, establish connections between these and develop conceptual thinking.
Development and learning are thus interrelated in the curricular framework of the programme in order to transcend each disciplinary area.
During its process of accreditation as an IB school, ZSB must revise its policies concerning educational integrity, assessment, languages, special needs and the use of Information and Communications Technology (ICT). This knowledge must be shared with the entire learning community.
The International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO) is a non-profit organisation. It has no shareholders and its profits are reinvested in its activity to continue an innovative education process with an international outlook based on thinking skills, research, communication, self-management and tolerant empathetic relationships. Focusing as we do on the personal abilities of each individual student means that Zürich Schule Barcelona teachers must work around the clock to broaden their own training. This extraordinary effort is rewarded by the educational results of Spanish baccalaureate graduates who have followed the IB methodology.
The IB Organization was originally founded in response to the lack of flexibility of different schooling systems around the world. Today, the IB education system is recognised by over one hundred countries, and a number of key universities in the United Kingdom and America warmly welcome students holding IB diplomas. IB schools strongly believe that the former narrow world of limited specialised learning processes is no longer valid.
Many universities worldwide follow this line of thinking, and a growing number of them are revising their admission criteria in order to attract more IB graduates.
Any questions?
Do you need further information? We’re here to help! If you should have any questions about our school, educational approach, school programmes, admission requirements or any other matter, don’t hesitate in getting in touch.
Our staff are committed to providing you with answers and guidance to ensure you make the best possible decision regarding your child’s education. We look forward to meeting you and sharing this educational journey!
