
We empower students to face and to take on today’s and tomorrow’s challenges.
We have developed a competency profile that covers five different transformations and sub-competences, with the aim of promoting a transformative holistic education that has an impact both on our students’ learning and on the world.
Furthermore, we have also drafted the Global Education Forum (GEF) manifesto, that plots a road map to fulfil our purpose as an education group at the forefront of global education and that is materialised through actions in the classrooms to equip our students with the tools to face the future successfully.
The Future Learning Model (FLM) is SEK’s pedagogical framework—a comprehensive approach built around nine key elements that define the learning we value and nurture across all stages and programmes in our schools.
The FLM has emerged from a thorough review of our Intelligent Classroom concept and the insights gained during the lockdown period, when online learning led us to explore new methodological formats and digital tools. It redefines the purpose of school as a “place” for broader, more connected learning that is responsive to the needs of the SEK Educational Community. Within this framework, SEK reaffirms its commitment to experiential and collaborative learning through the Learning Outside-In project, developed in partnership with Project Zero, a research centre at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. This project invites students to learn in non-school environments—such as museums, ports, or urban gardens—fostering curiosity, agency, enjoyment, and a sense of belonging. The active involvement of teachers, families, and the local community in designing learning paths transforms these spaces into meaningful learning experiences that strengthen both academic competencies and students’ overall well-being.
SEK International Schools offer the International Baccalaureate continuum for students from 3 to 18 years old. This includes the Primary Years Programme (PYP), Middle Years Programme (MYP) and Diploma Programme (DP).
The IB mission statement focuses on creating a better and more peaceful world through education, focusing on student-centred education that empowers and promotes agency, the development of international-mindedness, a broad, balanced, conceptual and connected education, and effective teaching-learning approaches.
The culminating experiences of the three programmes, the Exhibition in PYP8, the Personal Project in MYP5, and the Extended Essay in DP2 allow students to demonstrate their knowledge, conceptual understandings, skills, and dispositions acquired throughout the different stages.
Bilingual education is a feature of our schools, and we provide the opportunity to acquire additional languages both within the curriculum and in extracurricular activities, such as international experiences at our SEK Dublin and SEK Les Alpes schools.
Our students obtain outstanding results in university entrance exams for Spanish and foreign universities and academic honours from different educational bodies (Honours Awards for Baccalaureate, Alfonso Ussía Award to Student of the Year, Highest Selectividad Score in Spain). They take language exams (Cambridge, Goethe, Alliance Francaise) obtaining excellent results. And they score highly in the IB Diploma Programme, some earning a grade of 45, the world’s highest mark.
All SEK Education Group Students who take the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme and the Spanish Bachillerato get the High School Diploma, which gives them access to many universities in the United States and other countries.
Our team is highly experienced and innovative, they feel a true passion for learning and teaching and are aware of their role as mediators, guides and coaches, diagnosing students’ strengths and improvement opportunities, making them aware of new knowledge and fostering its understanding and transference to all walks of life, and favouring, at the same time, the individual attention over the entire the teaching process.
Our professionals are invited to participate in national and international conferences (IB, NEASC and ECIS among many others) and lead numerous applied research projects.
All schools have afternoons dedicated to collaborative planning and professional learning where SEK professionals develop micro-innovations that they apply to the classroom for the benefit of learning. All professional inquiries are shared with the entire school community at the annual SEK Symposium and in the Playbook found within the professional MySEK platform.
SEK International Schools benefit from the collaboration with Camilo José Cela University, both for the professional development of teachers and the enrichment of our students.
Our students are the central focus, the centre stage, of our educational action, and to ensure they are the fulcrum of all our activity in any time and place they work in a personalised, physical, blended or virtual learning environment that includes over twenty different applications that help them to communicate more fluently, work collaboratively, carry out online experiments, collect their evidence for learning, understand their personal evolution and discuss it in an orderly and regular manner with their teachers and tutors.
MySEK Educativo is, in this case, the personalised virtual workspace that places the student at the centre of everything. All our teachers design their teaching hours transversally integrating everything that has to do with digital skills and STEAM skills, so that our students always work in Maker environments, in educational spaces that present challenges that they solve through the use of most appropriate technologies.
Our educational offer is not only focused on academic aspects. We encourage holistic learning where students have the opportunity to develop their passions and spend time, within school hours, doing different sports, exploring various artistic disciplines, as well as any other interest they may have. For this, we have created Empowerment Hubs, time slots within school hours for students to explore their interests.
SEK International Schools offer a holistic education that includes both academic and artistic aspects (art, music and drama) and sports, with special attention to the well-being of our entire educational community.
Our wellness project includes the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence (YCEI), the RULER social and emotional intelligence program, which promotes the recognition, expression, and self-regulation of emotions.
Our students take part in complementary activities that ensure their personal growth as future leaders of society. Model United Nations speaking and debate events (SEKMUN, THIMUN…), media on campus (press, radio and television), robotics, maker spaces, exchanges, social action activities, programs for gifted and high achieving students. A wide ranging and outstanding set of opportunities for the all-round individual development of each student.
Our students can enjoy the advantages of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Awards Scheme that favours personal development by fostering leadership, autonomy, collaboration, conflict resolution, among many other skills.
During the school year, different cultural outings and trips are carried out to complement the curriculum.
We also offer a full range summer courses, both in Spain and abroad, with different itineraries that cater to the interests of students of all ages.
All schools offer the possibility of ski trips at the best resorts from our SEK Les Alpes school.
In addition, SEK has its own school ship, the schooner Cervantes Saavedra, a learning classroom at sea that rounds off the learning of our students, with an environmental project thus promoting the Sustainable Development Goals.
SEK Education Group has been a pioneer in Spain in the implementation of IB programmes since 1977.
To promote learning, innovation and improvement among all members of the SEK educational community, we are committed to models of excellence. We are accredited by the International Baccalaureate Organisation (IB) in all educational stages and by NEASC (New England Association of Schools and Colleges), in addition to being members of CIS and ECIS, among other highly recognised educational organisations worldwide such as ISTA , Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, Round Square, B Corp or UNICEF.
SEK International Schools are accredited by the National Child Safety Association, an organisation that ensures safety and risk prevention in schools.
With over a century of experience and ongoing innovation, many of our more than 100,000 alumni hold positions of relevance in society that speak to the worth of our school leavers. Because studying at a SEK International Schools is the best way of ensuring your child’s future.
SEK International Schools have developed their own Portfolio that includes evidence of the skills acquired over the years, and which culminates in the SEK Diploma at the end of the second year of Bachillerato/DP.
Our students access the most prestigious universities both nationally and internationally, such as Georgetown University, University of Berkley, University of Bath, Imperial College and the University of California, among many others.
The SEK portfolio that culminates in the SEK Diploma at the end of school and provides evidence of student learning.