"They didn't recommend the school we expected. They recommended the one our daughter now calls home."
Catherine WhitmoreMother of Harriet, now Year 9 at St Mary's Calne
No obligation. A 30-minute conversation to begin.
How a placement
actually works
Four unhurried stages. No spreadsheets sent home. No pressure to decide by return of post.
The Initial Conversation
Forty minutes. No agenda, no brochures. We ask about your child — their enthusiasms, their stumbling blocks, what makes them laugh at breakfast. We are listening for the school before we name it.
The Longlist
We draw on relationships with over 140 schools — senior and prep, day and full boarding, specialist and broad. We build a longlist of eight to twelve, then explain exactly why each one made it.
The Three Visits
We accompany you to the three schools we believe are genuinely right. We know which housemaster to meet, which lesson to observe, which corner of the grounds reveals what the prospectus cannot.
The Decision
We help you weigh the shortlist honestly — including the school you are nervous about but that we think is the one. Then we step back. The decision is always yours.
Every child is a case study of one
These are four of the families we have worked with in the last two years. Read them in order: each one is a little more complicated than the last.
A sporty boy, struggling academically
James had represented his county at cricket since he was eleven. He was bright, curious, and completely unable to sit still in a conventional classroom. Two prep schools had suggested he might not be "suited to academic work." His parents came to us convinced he needed a specialist school — and braced for very high fees.
First XI cricket by Lent term. Three A grades in his first set of internal exams.
The issue was never ability. James needed structured movement built into his day, and teachers trained to work with kinaesthetic learners. Twelve months in, his form tutor describes him as "one of the most engaged boys in the year."
"We came expecting to be told he was the difficult case. Placed came back with a school that seemed almost designed around him."
Lead violin in the junior orchestra by Michaelmas. Three close friendships within the first half-term.
The right specialist school is not always the most obvious one. Chetham's has a culture of collaborative rather than competitive music-making — exactly what Imogen needed. She is still quiet. She is also, for the first time, entirely at ease.
"Placed understood that what Imogen needed wasn't the best music school. It was the right music school. There is a difference."
A shy musician who needed to be found
Imogen was eleven, played violin to grade 7, and said perhaps twelve words to anyone outside her family in a given week. Her parents worried that boarding would overwhelm her. They had looked at the music schools themselves and felt they were too intense, too competitive. They almost didn't call us.
A bilingual girl relocating from Geneva
The Beaumont family had three months' notice of a move from Geneva. Their daughter Mathilde was twelve, fluent in French and English, academically strong, and deeply anxious about leaving her school and her friends. Her parents needed a school that could receive an international pupil mid-year and make her feel that arriving late was, somehow, an advantage.
Settled within the first fortnight. Now head of the French Society in Year 10.
Wycombe Abbey admits a cohort of international pupils at Year 9 entry — Mathilde arrived alongside fourteen others in the same position. Her French was not a complication to manage; it was an asset the school actively celebrated.
"We had six weeks to find the right school. Placed found it in two. We still don't know how."
Reading age advanced by three years in twelve months. Confident transition to mainstream senior school at 13+.
Bruern Abbey exists for boys exactly like Oliver. The staff-to-pupil ratio is extraordinary; the teaching is forensic. He left at thirteen with a scholarship offer and, more importantly, the belief that he was capable of earning one.
"The moment they told us Oliver was the kind of boy they'd built the school for, something shifted. That was Placed's gift to us."
A boy with dyslexia and dyscalculia, and enormous potential
Oliver had a formal Educational Psychologist's report, a diagnosis of dyslexia and dyscalculia, and a father who had been to Eton. The tension in the first meeting was palpable. His parents had spent three years being told to "manage expectations." They had not yet been told to raise them.
Thirty minutes to understand
your child
The initial consultation is free, unhurried, and without obligation. We ask you to fill in a short qualifying questionnaire first — it takes four minutes and helps us come to the conversation already thinking about the right schools.
Placed Consultancy Ltd · Registered in England & Wales · IAPS & BSA member consultancy