Sofía Vásquez

Educational Coach & Former ESO Guidance Counsellor

Sofía Vásquez worked for eight years as an orientadora (guidance counsellor) at IES Ramiro de Maeztu in Madrid, one of the most selective public secondary schools in the Community of Madrid, supporting ESO and Bachillerato students through academic transitions, EBAU preparation and learning-difficulty assessments. In 2021 she designed and led the school's first structured metacognition programme for 2nd-year Bachillerato students, which cut mean EBAU anxiety scores by 22% on the Escala de Ansiedad ante los Exámenes (EAE) instrument. She holds a Máster en Psicopedagogía from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and a Licenciatura en Psicología Educativa from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. A certified bilingual coach (Spanish/English, ICF Associate level), she now runs a private coaching practice where she works with 15-20 students annually on metacognitive skill-building, study system design and exam anxiety management, with particular expertise in Selectividad and EBAU strategy for students targeting selective public universities in Spain. Her methodology draws on Cognitive Load Theory (Sweller), Retrieval Practice research (Roediger & Karpicke) and the Spanish Modelo Educativo Competencial. She is especially interested in how Latinx students in Spain experience the orientation system differently from domestic students, and she writes a monthly column for a Madrid-based family education magazine. She believes that most orientation advice fails students because it focuses on choosing a career rather than understanding how the student learns. She also advises school psychology teams on designing equitable orientation pathways for students from low-income households, where she has observed the clearest divergence between institutional academic tracking and individual student potential.