How Aquinas American School Families Access Examination Accommodations and Learning Support
Aquinas American School operates two campuses in Pozuelo de Alarcón, in the quiet Monte Alina neighbourhood on the western edge of Madrid bordering Boadilla del Monte. The Elementary School sits on Calle Transversal Cuatro and the High School on Calle Poniente, both within walking distance of each other.
Aquinas is Catholic, co-educational, and serves around 700 students from age three through Grade 12, with an average class size of 20. The school was founded in 2012 and is the origin school of the Mathema Education group, which also operates the International School of Navarra and a sister AAS campus in Malaga.
Annual tuition runs from EUR 8,200 in Kindergarten to EUR 13,500 in the final two years of High School, with the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme adding a further EUR 1,500. The school delivers the American national curriculum from K1 through Grade 12, with the IB Diploma Programme available in Grades 11 and 12, which Aquinas has offered since 2016.
High School students choose between the American High School Diploma, the IB Diploma, or both, with the option to sit individual IB courses for IB Certificates without committing to the full Diploma. Aquinas operates as an authorised College Board SAT testing centre, runs UNED preparation for Spanish university entrance, and offers a boarding programme alongside two high performance sports academies in football (with Getafe International Madrid) and basketball (with BT Torrelodones).
How Aquinas Approaches Student Support
Aquinas operates a Student Support Services function within the school, structured to provide personalised support to students and families navigating learning and emotional challenges. The team works with classroom teachers to embed reasonable adjustments where documentation supports it. For a school of around 700 students across two campuses, this support is meaningful but operates at the scale the school is built for.
What the school does not produce in-house is the formal diagnostic documentation that the College Board and the International Baccalaureate require when granting examination access arrangements. This is the case at almost every international school in Madrid and it reflects how the system is designed. The College Board explicitly requires documentation from a qualified external professional. The IB requires similar independence. The Student Support team’s classroom observations and academic monitoring are valuable for daily practice, but they do not substitute for the diagnostic report the examination boards specifically demand.
This makes the relationship between Aquinas and an external educational psychologist straightforward. The school provides the daily support. The independent assessment provides the documentation. Both are necessary, and they work together rather than in competition.
What Aquinas Families Are Trying to Unlock
Examination accommodations available to Aquinas students fall across several specific systems. The College Board administers SAT, PSAT, and AP accommodations through Services for Students with Disabilities. The IB administers IB Diploma access arrangements through its own Inclusive Access Arrangements process.
Each system has its own application timeline and its own evidence requirements, but the underlying clinical documentation overlaps substantially.
The accommodations themselves include extra time in exams (commonly 25 per cent, with 50 or 100 per cent available where the diagnostic profile supports it), supervised rest breaks, a separate examination room, small group testing, use of a word processor, use of a reader or scribe, speech-to-text or text-to-speech software, modified paper formats, a prompter for students with attention difficulties, and permission to take medication during examinations. Both the College Board and the IB require current diagnostic documentation from a qualified professional, with diagnoses anchored in DSM-5-TR and ICD-11 criteria and recommendations linked specifically to the accommodations being requested.
What a Comprehensive Psychoeducational Assessment Actually Examines
A comprehensive psychoeducational assessment is a multi-dimensional evaluation that examines how a child learns, thinks, and functions across several domains. It begins with cognitive abilities, the child’s reasoning, memory, and problem-solving, then examines how these abilities translate into academic achievement in reading, writing, and mathematics.
Beyond this foundation, the assessment explores executive functioning, the brain manager skills of planning, organisation, and working memory. It examines attention and behavioural patterns. It explores emotional wellbeing, including anxiety and depression.
The power of the assessment lies in its integration. By examining the child through multiple lenses, standardised testing, behavioural rating scales, emotional measures, and real-time observations, the educational psychologist identifies patterns that explain the child’s unique learning profile. This allows the report to distinguish between academic difficulties stemming from cognitive processing challenges like dyslexia or dyscalculia, attention problems such as ADHD, executive function weaknesses, dysgraphia, or emotional factors like anxiety.
The Global Education Testing Madrid battery uses the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children Fifth Edition or the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale Fifth Edition for cognitive assessment, the Wechsler Individual Achievement Test Third Edition for academic functioning, CTOPP for phonological processing, DASH for handwriting fluency, Conners and SNAP for attention and executive function, the Taylor Complex Figure Test for visual-spatial processing, and Rotter for emotional and behavioural factors.
For Aquinas families, where many students are Spanish-first or speak a third language at home, the assessment also performs a specific clinical function. It distinguishes genuine learning differences from the natural lag of multilingual acquisition. Children in international schools often present complex profiles, and a comprehensive assessment conducted in the language of instruction is structured to differentiate between the two.
Four Things That Matter for Aquinas Families
The assessment must be conducted in English, the language of instruction at Aquinas, to produce results that map onto the classroom and the examination hall.
A Spanish-language report from a local neuropediatra, however clinically capable, will not satisfy the College Board or the IB. The format, the named subtests, the diagnostic frameworks, and the qualifications of the assessor are international standards.
A single-condition screen is not enough. Dyslexia, dyscalculia, ADHD, dysgraphia, and anxiety co-occur frequently, and a comprehensive battery is what produces the clinical picture the examination boards actually need.
The report needs to be current. The College Board expects documentation dated within approximately five years of the application. The IB expects documentation dated within approximately two to three years. An assessment in Middle School or early High School supports the full examination cycle through to graduation.
What Global Education Testing Madrid Delivers
The comprehensive psychoeducational assessment is delivered by HCPC-registered educational psychologists, with reports anchored in DSM-5-TR and ICD-11 diagnostic criteria. The 20 to 30 page report is structured to satisfy the College Board, the International Baccalaureate, and university disability support services within a single document. Assessments are scheduled within two weeks of initial contact and reports delivered within three weeks of the final testing session. Testing is conducted via secure video link. Students aged 12 and above complete the assessment in a single four-hour session; students under 12 complete it across two consecutive days of approximately two hours each.
Real-time translation is available for parent consultations and feedback meetings in virtually any language. The comprehensive assessment costs EUR 2,650 or local currency equivalent.
Next Steps
Aquinas families considering an independent psychoeducational assessment can contact Global Education Testing Madrid through the button below: