Introduction: Current cognitive approaches highlight the importance of metacognition. "Learning how to learn" facilities awareness of one's own learning process, how they work, how to optimize their functioning, control of reading process, and so on. Acquisition of these skills is one of the new educational requirements for students, as is recorded in many educational reform plans in Europe, North America and Latin America. Method: The test includes 56 items that represent "reading situations"; each situation offers three alternatives from which the reader must make a choice. The option selected reveals how readers "perceive themselves" and "how they believe they would act" if faced with these dilemmas. Each option expresses a different degree of reading awareness. The test has been validated with Spanish and Argentine samples, making up a total sample of 684 students from ages 8 to 13 (375 Spaniards and 309 Argentines.) Results: Results indicate that the ESCOLA instrument can quickly and accurately gather information about a student's level of reading awareness. Younger students have a lower level of reading awareness than the older students. Conclusions: In addition to identifying students with low reading awareness, results obtained from ESCOLA make it possible to design specific intervention programs for metacognitive strategies in the area of reading. Currently there is no existing product with these features. Modern psychologists and educators consider that metacognitive training is a crucial aspect of developing reflection, autonomous learning and construction of knowledge on the part of teachers and students. (Contains 5 tables and 3 figures.)