In Spain, the INE (National Statistics Institute) defines extreme rurality as towns with fewer than 2,000 inhabitants, using a demographic criterion. Official regulations do not define rural schools; however, the current Education Act identifies schools located in areas isolated by the surrounding geography, inaccessible, or with very small population centres. Grouped Rural Schools, one-classroom schools or incomplete schools are different organisational modalities with at least two educational levels sharing classroom and teacher. In Spain, the high number of schools and the demographic and structural changes in the educational system have conditioned the interpretation of national data regarding the increase or decrease in the number of rural schools. It seems that in the 1970s, economic and technocratic rationality criteria brought the closure of numerous schools and the creation of school concentrations and Home Schools (Hernández, 2000). In the 1980s, with the transition to democracy, a royal decree on Compensatory Education contributed to school decentralisation and the reconstruction of rural schools (Grande, 1994; Santamaría, 1996). In the late 1980s, and throughout the 1990s, Grouped Rural Schools, which remain today, were created (Berlanga, 2003; Feu, 2008). Several publications (Abós et al. 2015) and conferences show the importance some of the autonomous communities attach to rural schools. However, educational reports from the government do not address the particularity of these schools (Santamaría, 2014).

Abós, P., Boix, R., Bustos, J.A., Domingo, L., Domingo, R.V. and Ramo, M. (2015). Rural schools and educational policy in Spain: Differences among the Autonomous Communities. Internatinal Studies on Law and Education 19, 1-18. Berlanga, S. (2003). Educación en el medio rural. Análisis, perspectivas y propuestas. Zaragoza. Mira Editores. Feu, J. (2008). La escuela rural desde la atalaya educativa. En N. Llevot y J. Garreta. Escuela y sociedad rural. Lleida: Fundación Santamaría/Universitat de Lleida. pp. 61-86. Grande, M. (1994). La escuela rural en el España. De la LGE a las LOGSE. Balance y perspectivas. Tesis Doctoral no publicada. Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca. Hernández, J.M. (2000). La escuela rural en la España del siglo XX. Revista de Educación. Número extraordinario La educación en España en el siglo XX, 113-136. Santamaría, R. (1996). La escuela rural entre 1970 y 1990. Zona del río Villahermosa. Tesis Doctoral. Universitat Jaume I. Castelló. Extraído de http://hdl.handle.net/10803/84066