Online Educational Psychology Assessments for International College Spain Madrid Students
IB-Compliant Documentation
International College Spain has been delivering the International Baccalaureate for more than 45 years, longer than any other school in Spain, and is the only Madrid school authorised to deliver all three IB programmes (PYP, MYP, and DP) in English on a single campus.
Every ICS student therefore moves through an IB-aligned educational journey from age three to 18. The documentation a family needs to support that journey is also IB-specific.
Global Education Testing delivers IB-compliant psychoeducational and neurodevelopmental assessments to ICS families via secure video link. The 20 to 30 page diagnostic report is anchored in DSM-5-TR and ICD-11 criteria, written in English by HCPC-registered educational psychologists, and structured to meet the IB’s Inclusive Access Arrangements documentation requirements alongside the College Board (SAT, ACT, AP), Spanish EvAU university entrance, and university learning support services in the UK, US, Spain, and beyond.
Access is immediate. The full process from initial enquiry to delivery of the written report takes 21 days and costs EUR 2,650 with sibling discounts available.
About International College Spain
ICS sits on Calle Vereda Norte in La Moraleja, Alcobendas, on the northern edge of Madrid. The school serves around 700 students from more than 70 nationalities, with annual tuition running from approximately EUR 10,332 in the Early Years to EUR 25,635 for the IB Diploma Programme.
The school joined the Nord Anglia Education group in 2015 and now benefits from group-wide collaborations with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, The Juilliard School, Kings College London, and UNICEF. The Nord Anglia network includes more than 80 schools globally, which means an ICS family relocating internationally can often continue within the same group structure elsewhere.
The IB results are strong. The 2025 graduating cohort recorded a 95 per cent IBDP pass rate, with an average score of 35.2 against a world average of 29.9, 21 per cent of students scoring 40 points or above, and the highest individual result reaching the maximum 45/45. One in three ICS students progresses to a top 50 world university.
ICS is non-selective on entry and operates a dedicated Learning Support team that includes occupational therapists and speech and language specialists alongside subject teachers. The school also offers an alternative ICS High School Diploma for students who, for any reason, are not on track to complete the full IB Diploma requirements.
What a Comprehensive Psychoeducational Assessment Examines
A comprehensive psychoeducational assessment provides ICS families, teachers, and the Learning Support team with a detailed clinical understanding of how a student learns, processes information, regulates attention, manages academic demands, and functions within an IB Continuum environment.
The assessment examines:
- Cognitive abilities, reasoning, and problem-solving
- Working memory, processing speed, and learning efficiency
- Reading, spelling, written expression, and mathematics attainment
- Attention regulation, concentration, and impulsivity
- Executive functioning skills including organisation, planning, task initiation, and self-monitoring
- Emotional wellbeing, school anxiety, and academic stress
- Behavioural and social functioning
- Learning differences including dyslexia, ADHD, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, autism spectrum profiles, and processing difficulties
A Global Education Testing (Madrid)comprehensive assessment supports families and the ICS Learning Support team in identifying special educational needs, planning classroom and executive functioning interventions, structuring emotional wellbeing support, and applying for examination access arrangements.
The diagnostic findings, where clinically appropriate, support:
- Extra time in examinations (commonly 25 per cent, with 50 or 100 per cent available where the diagnostic profile supports it)
- Supervised rest breaks
- A separate or smaller examination room with reduced distraction
- Use of a laptop or word processor
- Reader, scribe, speech-to-text, and text-to-speech support
- Modified paper formats and assistive technology
- A prompter for students with attention difficulties
- Permission to take medication during examinations
- Organisational, executive functioning, and differentiated classroom strategies
ICS Madrid students move from PYP through MYP and into the IB Diploma Programme without sitting IGCSE examinations or A Levels. The first external examinations are the IB Diploma examinations at the end of Year 13.
The IB administers IB Diploma access arrangements through its Inclusive Access Arrangements process. The documentation requirements are specific. The assessor must hold recognised professional qualifications, with HCPC registration in the United Kingdom or equivalent registration elsewhere being the standard the IB accepts.
The diagnostic statement must be anchored in DSM-5-TR or ICD-11 criteria. The report must include named standardised subtests with standard scores and percentile ranks rather than general descriptive findings. Recommendations must be linked specifically to the diagnostic findings and to the demonstrated functional impact in the student’s academic work.
Many ICS students also sit the SAT, ACT, and Advanced Placement examinations administered by the College Board for US university applications. For students applying to Spanish universities, the EvAU process is administered by the Spanish university entrance commissions.
The same Global Education Testing report supports all three systems alongside university learning support services across the destinations ICS graduates reach.
Why Comprehensive Assessment Supports the IBDP and ICS Diploma Pathway Decision
ICS is unusual among Madrid IB schools in offering a second pathway alongside the full IB Diploma Programme. The ICS High School Diploma is available for students who are not on track to complete the full IB Diploma requirements.
This means that in Year 11 and the early part of Year 12, every ICS family faces a real decision: pursue the full IB Diploma, or follow the ICS High School Diploma pathway. The decision shapes the student’s university destinations, the demands of the next two years, and the documentation that will support the student through external examinations.
A comprehensive psychoeducational assessment is the document that makes this decision well-informed. The cognitive battery reveals the student’s reasoning, working memory, processing speed, and verbal comprehension profile. The academic battery reveals where reading, writing, and mathematics actually sit.
The executive function and attention measures reveal the student’s capacity to manage the demands of the full IB Diploma’s six subjects, Theory of Knowledge, Extended Essay, and CAS portfolio simultaneously. The emotional functioning measures reveal whether the cumulative pressure of the IBDP is the right environment for the student or whether the ICS Diploma route, with its different demands, is the better match.
A single-condition screen does not support this decision. A dyslexia-only screen, an ADHD-only screen, or any single-issue investigation tells the family whether one named condition is present and stops.
The comprehensive assessment produces an integrated profile, with recommendations linked specifically to the demands of each pathway. For students who proceed to the IB Diploma, the documentation is exactly what the IB Inclusive Access Arrangements process expects. For students who proceed to the ICS Diploma, the documentation supports ICS in shaping the student’s programme and supports any subsequent applications to universities that recognise the ICS qualification.
The report works in both scenarios.
The Problem with Local Spanish Assessments
A Spanish-language informe psicopedagógico may satisfy parts of the Spanish university entrance pathway, but it will not be accepted by the College Board, by Cambridge International, or by US universities. The format, the named subtests, the standard scoring conventions, the diagnostic frameworks, and the qualifications of the assessor are international standards.
A Dragon student pursuing the American Diploma alongside the Spanish Bachillerato needs documentation that satisfies both systems.
Dragon’s experienced teaching team and the educational mentor model produce unusually detailed knowledge of each student. What they do not produce is the independent, externally-authored diagnostic documentation the examination boards specifically require.
Why Comprehensive Assessment Suits the Personalised Dragon Model
Dragon American School operates on a foundational premise that few schools embrace as fully: every student has a unique cognitive, emotional, and developmental profile, and effective education starts with understanding that profile rather than imposing a uniform programme on top of it.
The school’s flexible mixed-age groups, the absence of identical student timetables, and the educational mentor model all flow from this premise. The school treats individual differences as the default, not the exception.
A comprehensive psychoeducational assessment is the diagnostic instrument that operates from the same starting point. The assessment does not begin by asking whether a single named condition is present. It begins by mapping the student’s cognitive abilities, then maps academic achievement, then maps executive function, then maps attention through self-report and computerised continuous performance testing, then maps emotional functioning and adjustment.
The integrated profile reveals the unique cognitive, academic, and emotional shape of the individual student.
For Dragon’s educational mentor working with a student, this integrated profile is exactly the kind of information the personalised pathway model is built to use. A mentor who knows that a student has strong fluid reasoning but slow processing speed designs a different programme from one who knows the student has average cognitive ability but specific phonological processing difficulties. A mentor who understands that a student’s attention difficulties reflect ADHD recommends different supports from one who understands that the same surface symptoms reflect anxiety.
The comprehensive assessment provides the depth that Dragon’s personalised approach can actually work with.
A single-condition screen does not produce this picture. A dyslexia-only screen tells the family whether dyslexia is present and stops. It does not capture the broader profile that Dragon’s mentor model is designed to respond to.
The comprehensive assessment captures it. The school’s pedagogy assumes individual difference is the norm; the comprehensive assessment is the clinical articulation of that individual difference.
This is also what the examination boards require. The College Board, UNED, and Cambridge International all expect documentation that captures the full functional picture rather than a single diagnostic label.