The Spanish school empowering students to become architects of their own future through its life-centred learning ecosystem
Learnlife, an independent primary and secondary school in Barcelona, Spain, with three campus ‘hubs’, is challenging the deeply embedded assumption in modern education that young people learn best when their learning is tightly controlled, monitored and standardised. Instead, the school has built an entire life-centred learning ecosystem where learning has been co-created around trust, agency and life-readiness, where students design personal learning pathways, teachers are guides and mentors, and control becomes ownership to develop purpose and readiness.
Founded in response to what the school describes as a growing systemic mismatch between traditional education and the realities of the contemporary world, the model is designed around freedom and flexibility alongside a strong relationship between trust and choice, with students encouraged to make decisions about their learning path from as early as possible. For example, in mathematics, learners can choose between applied math, maths for science and business, or transdisciplinary maths integrated into subjects like biology, giving them much more freedom within a defined structure. The approach draws on open-space methodologies, similar to those used in conferences, where participants propose and explore topics of interest.
As students advance, they grow the agency to build their own curriculum through a trial week where they can explore their options before committing to a ‘building block’ for each learning cycle.
Teachers, who are called Learning Guides, work closely with students to design each learning experience to focus on personal learning where the child can develop and manage their own process, building responsibility and autonomy from the outset as meaningful capabilities. Classrooms become learning studios, and traditional silos like age and fixed timetables have been removed to give students and teachers the flexibility to collaborate and share their experiences with each other in a much more fluid and connected space.
Daily stand-up meetings create space for reflection, celebration and collaborative problem-solving among staff, while learners describe relationships with educators as open, supportive and grounded in trust rather than fear or authority. If students feel demotivated, this is approached as part of the learning process itself, with mentors helping them name and understand their emotions and how these can be used in more positive ways.
Assessment has also been fundamentally redesigned. Rather than relying primarily on grades and examinations, learners document their progress through a Learning Vitae - portfolios, artefacts, exhibitions, reflective evidence and public showcases of work. Students themselves take responsibility for uploading evidence, tagging competencies and highlighting their growth through a 360-degree assessment process which involves peer review, mentors and parents.
Families are deeply integrated into the model as active partners in the learning journey. Because many parents initially struggle to understand a system without traditional exams or ranking structures, the school places significant emphasis on transparency and evidence of learning to help families shift their understanding of what meaningful progress can look like.
Learners have described the model as transformational and are achieving close to 100% graduation. Within the 2025 graduating cohort, 100% of learners identified the depth of the learning community, relationships and sense of belonging as central to staying motivated and engaged. Teacher retention has remained above 90% since the school began.
The school also works closely with educational networks, institutions and schools across Catalunya, Spain and Europe, sharing practices, providing training and collaboratively refining new approaches to learning and assessment. Government relationships have been particularly significant, with the school maintaining strong institutional trust through ongoing reporting, transparency and open sharing of its frameworks and methodologies.
