This is our residence

Respect, conviviality and an experience based on internalization: these are some of the advantages offered by our boarding program. Our residence is the perfect choice for students looking for an innovative and enriching educational experience.

Who is our boarding program for?

The residence of Agora International School Andorra is aimed at students between 9 and 18 years old who want to study a complete course, a semester or a trimester. It is ideal for those families who want their children to enjoy the experience of interacting and living with students from different countries. In addition, our residence is located in an exceptional spot: a natural environment of great environmental and scenic value at an altitude of 1,250 meters and only 10 minutes from the ski slopes.

What are the benefits of the boarding program for the student?

Spending a course or part of it in the residence allows students to live an innovative educational experience in which they can meet and interact with people of different nationalities, with the cultural richness that this brings, besides being a perfect option to practice and develop more closely in other languages. However, the benefits of this option go beyond that:

• Learning values: respect, coexistence, the feeling of belonging to a group or being part of a community to which one is committed. These values are essential for life and undoubtedly leave a very important learning experience.
• Autonomy: students gain in autonomy, learn to organize themselves and plan their responsibilities in a more independent and disciplined manner. However, when we say that they gain in autonomy, we do not mean that they go their own way or that they do not receive advice at this stage: the residents, in continuity with the school’s educational line of work, are guided by two tutors. One of them is in charge of the student’s academic performance and the other is in charge of aspects related to coexistence, extracurricular activities and their well-being at school. In addition, both are in constant communication with the family. “The happiness of our children depends on making them more capable”, says Silvia Álava, a health psychologist and expert in educational psychology. Autonomy is a good way to achieve this.
• Self-esteem and confidence: feeling more autonomous makes students more self-confident and improves their self-esteem: “When we educate a child with respect, discipline and affection he learns faster to follow the rules, but also develops greater self-esteem and confidence” assures the neuropsychologist, lecturer and author of the book “El cerebro del niño explicado a los padres”, Alvaro Bilbao. In our school respect and discipline are important, but always based on the accompaniment and support of the students.
• Multilingualism: languages are fundamental in the educational development of children and very necessary for their professional future. Our school offers a multilingual program in which Spanish is the vehicular language, but English and French are also very important. In addition, being located in Andorra, our students also study Catalan as a non-vehicular language from kindergarten to high school. In the classrooms, students learn these languages with native or bilingual teachers, they can take the official exams and study the Diploma Program (DP) of the International Baccalaureate (IB). But not only that: living in the residence with students of different nationalities, the practice of the different languages is also ensured in their leisure time and in their daily life outside the classroom.
• The importance of sports: being in contact with a natural environment, the practice of exercise and sports are also encouraged. The ski slopes, as we said before, are only 10 minutes away from the residence, but, in addition, some of our students are high-performance athletes, so we have study-training programs adapted to their needs so that they can meet the official syllabus and combine them with training.

How is the residents’ school day organized?

The day to day life of the students in our residence, during the week, consists of the school day that all the students of our center have, complemented with directed study sessions and sports activities that take place from 5:00 p.m. until dinner time.  For those students who have difficulties in their academic performance, reinforcement classes are also offered.

The aim is that residents feel at home and enjoy the facilities, so the center has WI-FI, cleaning and laundry service, study room and an outdoor patio with basketball court, barbecue and enviable views of the Pyrenees. As we have mentioned, socializing and interacting with other residents is another essential pillar of this educational experience, so students can meet downstairs in a living room where they can watch TV, play table soccer, ping pong or darts.

During the weekends, students who wish to stay at the residence can opt for study sessions, sports activities or organized cultural outings.

In search of educational excellence

The theologian, pedagogue and writer Carmen Pellicer, founding president of the Trilema Foundation and director of ‘Cuadernos de Pedagogía’ said in a talk entitled ‘Schools that learn’ held last year, that “every child has the right to educational excellence”,  understanding this as the efforts of the educational community to try to get the best out of each child and that is the guideline and the key objective by which we are governed in our center and in our residence.