Brewster is the only school in Madrid offering both the Advanced Placement programme and the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme alongside the American High School Diploma.
Upper School students choose between the American High School Diploma with AP courses, or the full IB Diploma Programme, with students who complete the IB also earning the American High School Diploma.
This dual pathway is the defining feature of Brewster’s academic structure, and it shapes the documentation question for families with children showing signs of dyslexia, dyscalculia, ADHD, anxiety, dysgraphia, or autism.
The College Board administers AP examinations and AP access arrangements and is strict when it comes to awarding accommodations such as extra time in exams.
The International Baccalaureate administers IB Diploma access arrangements through its own Inclusive Access Arrangements process.
A Brewster student who keeps both pathways open in Grade 10, before committing to one at the start of Grade 11, needs documentation that satisfies both systems within a single report.
A single comprehensive psychoeducational assessment from Global Education Testing, anchored in DSM-5-TR and ICD-11 diagnostic criteria and structured to satisfy all three systems within one document, supports a Brewster student through the full Upper School examination cycle and onward into university.
Comprehensive Educational Assessments for Brewster Madrid Students
A comprehensive psychoeducational assessment provides a detailed understanding of how a child learns, processes information, and functions across different areas of development. Rather than focusing on a single concern in isolation, it builds a complete picture of the child’s cognitive, academic, behavioural, and emotional profile.
The process begins by examining cognitive functioning, including reasoning abilities, memory, processing skills, and problem-solving. It then looks at how these abilities affect academic performance in areas such as reading, written expression, mathematics, and learning efficiency.
The assessment also explores executive functioning skills, including organisation, planning, working memory, self-monitoring, and cognitive flexibility. Attention regulation, behavioural patterns, emotional wellbeing, and social functioning are considered as part of the wider clinical picture.
What makes a comprehensive assessment valuable is the integration of all of this information. Through standardised testing, behavioural questionnaires, clinical observations, developmental history, and emotional measures, the psychologist identifies patterns that explain not only what difficulties exist, but why they are occurring.
This broader approach helps distinguish between overlapping or co-occurring conditions. For example, difficulties with reading may involve dyslexia, but they may also be influenced by ADHD, executive functioning weaknesses, anxiety, dysgraphia, autism, or processing speed challenges. Looking at only one area risks missing the wider factors affecting the child’s learning and daily functioning.
In contrast, a single-condition screening focuses narrowly on whether one specific difficulty is present. While useful in limited situations, it does not provide the depth needed to fully understand the child’s overall profile or the interaction between cognitive, academic, behavioural, and emotional factors.
A comprehensive assessment creates a more accurate and clinically meaningful understanding of the child, allowing schools, parents, and examination boards to make informed decisions about support, accommodations, and intervention planning.
Brewster Madrid students often present complex profiles. Many are educated in English at school while speaking Spanish at home and a third language with grandparents or in earlier schooling.
Some have transferred into Brewster from the Spanish system, the British system, or other American schools at different points in their education. Some show apparent difficulties that turn out to be the natural lag of multilingual acquisition rather than an underlying learning disorder.
The clinical question of whether a particular difficulty reflects a true learning difference or the developmental footprint of multilingual education is one that Global Education Testing Madrid psychologists are specifically trained to answer.
The cognitive battery we use is structured to measure reasoning ability with minimal language load. The phonological processing measures distinguish phonological awareness from English vocabulary. The academic assessment compares the child’s attainment against standardised English-language peers while interpreting findings against the developmental context the child actually grew up in.
The differential between a multilingual child still acquiring English literacy and a multilingual child with dyslexia is a clinical judgement, and it requires a psychologist who has done this work many times before in international school settings.
Access Arrangements and School Accommodations for Brewster Students Following Psychoeducational Assessment
Following a comprehensive psychoeducational assessment from Global Education Testing, students may become eligible for a range of school-based and examination accommodations designed to reduce the impact of their learning differences and allow them to demonstrate their knowledge more fairly.
The specific accommodations recommended will depend on the student’s cognitive profile, diagnosis, functional difficulties, and the requirements of the school or examination board.
Common examination accommodations include:
• Extra time in examinations
• Rest breaks during assessments
• Use of a word processor or laptop
• Reader support
• Scribe support
• Modified examination papers
• Smaller or separate examination rooms
• Supervised rest periods
• Prompting for attention or focus
• Speech-to-text or text-to-speech technology
• Coloured overlays or modified visual formats
• Permission to use assistive technology
School-based accommodations often extend beyond formal examinations and can play an equally important role in supporting day to day learning. These include:
• Extended deadlines for assignments
• Reduced homework load
• Teacher-provided notes or lesson outlines
• Preferential seating
• Organisational support
• Visual schedules and planning systems
• Chunking of tasks into smaller steps
• Reduced distraction environments
• Assistive technology in the classroom
• Regular check-ins with learning support staff
• Adjusted classroom expectations for processing speed, attention, or executive functioning difficulties
Accommodations are not designed to give students an unfair advantage. Their purpose is to remove barriers created by learning differences, neurodevelopmental conditions, or processing difficulties so that students can access learning and assessment on a more equitable basis.
A detailed psychoeducational assessment provides the objective clinical evidence schools and examination boards require when determining eligibility for accommodations. It also helps educators and families understand not only which supports are appropriate, but why those supports are necessary for the student’s long-term academic success and wellbeing.