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Barcelona Schools Implement Phone Ban as Enrollment Drops, New Facilities Open
Shifts in enrolment, new facilities in Nou Barris and Sant Andreu, and a phone ban will affect daily routines for households across the city.
How we reported this
The 2025/26 school year in Catalonia opens on September 8 for early childhood, primary and compulsory secondary education, with 1,040,925 students expected, down 12,013 from the prior year because of falling birth rates. Smartphones and smartwatches will be banned outright in all schools and colleges serving compulsory-education pupils, with no exceptions allowed during the school day or on school grounds.
New schools and training reach neighbourhoods directly
Barcelona opened five new all-through schools for the 2024/25 year, four of them enlarged sites in Nou Barris and one merged institute in Sant Andreu, creating 11,720 additional places for three-year-olds. A separate three-year programme called Xarxes per al canvi will now train staff at 152 Barcelona schools, 87 of them public and 65 state-funded, in competence-based teaching methods. The Barcelona Education Consortium, Escola Nova 21 and the Institute of Educational Sciences at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona are running the training.
These additions matter for residents because they increase local capacity in districts where families have long competed for spots, while the training programme targets classroom practices that parents encounter every term. The phone ban removes a common source of distraction and conflict during the school day, shifting how children move between lessons and breaks in every neighbourhood school.
Segregation metrics show measurable gains
The 2024 Education Opportunities Report records that school segregation in Barcelona fell from 0.49 to 0.39 in pre-school and primary and from 0.44 to 0.34 in secondary education between 2020-2021 and 2023-2024. Results for vulnerable students rose 6 percent on average over the same period. Lower segregation figures indicate that more children from different backgrounds now attend the same schools, which residents say affects after-school social networks and long-term access to support services.
Families can check the updated enrolment rules and the device policy on the city education pages ahead of the September 8 start. School staff will receive further guidance on the Xarxes per al canvi sessions through the Barcelona Education Consortium.