School Shortlisting from Select:ed
Identify right-fit, attainable schools that are matched to your child’s academic profile
Which schools might be realistically within reach for your child? Where do they sit in relation to their peers? Knowing the answers to these questions is important when planning your child’s education, whether you are considering independent schools, selective/grammar schools or trying to identify the best fit state school for your child in your area.
Select:ed has pioneered a modern approach to educational advice that combines emotional understanding of your child’s character with data-driven insight on schools.
Parents choosing School Shortlisting from Select:ed will receive:
– a detailed, benchmarked breakdown of your child’s academic strengths and weaknesses, topic by topic for 11+ and other entrance exams
– recommended shortlist of schools within commuting distance that could be within reach in terms of academic entry requirements
School Shortlisting is priced at £2260 GBP
“Adam means education (not only exams) and inspiration for the next level, not for school but life skills too. Grateful for his input. Best you can ever have.”
Guided by the Select:ed school admissions experts, School Shortlisting will give you actionable information to help you make the right decisions about your child’s educational journey.
Understand
The results of your child’s academic assessment will give you an in-depth understanding of their child’s academic strengths and weaknesses, with a detailed snapshot of topic understanding and sub-skills in core subjects, allowing you to diagnose any learning gaps.
This insight cuts through fluffy school reports full of vague descriptors like ‘emerging’ or ‘greater depth’. This service includes a personalised debriefing by video conference, guided by one of our specialist advisers, to explain your child’s assessment results.
Plan
After your child has completed the academic assessment, the Select:ed team will start drawing up a shortlist of potential schools that match your child’s academic profile. Our proprietary dataset includes more than 2500 information points on over 200 selective schools. In addition, we have access to Government and private datasets to provide you with the most accurate, up to date information.
The objective here is identifying ambitious yet achievable schools, in terms of academic entry requirements, that will challenge and engage your son or daughter over the coming years.
Succeed
Of course, the proof of the pudding is in the eating! The Select:ed approach has helped children from hundreds of families like yours gain places at academically selective schools at 10/11+, 13+ and 16+ entry points. Our specialist team includes expert school entrance tutors to support your son or daughter with filling any learning gaps.
Our educational ethos centres on the principle of academic value-add: that, regardless of starting point, we are intellectually ambitious for your child and want to help them secure their next step in education that challenges and excites them. We look for schools that do the same.
“Mr. D'Souza knows his field inside and out. A great thinker, he was able to assess the needs of our child and suggest pathways we would not have come up with on our own. In the end, we found an excellent school to match our child.”
School Shortlisting in three simple steps
1. Context-gathering call with Adam, founder of Select:ed
Before your child sits the academic assessments, we will arrange a 30 minute call with Adam D’Souza, founder of Select:ed and an expert on global school admissions, on the phone or video conference. The aim of this call is to learn more about your parameters for future schooling and your son or daughter’s academic strengths, personality and motivation.
2. Your child completes the academic assessment
Your son or daughter will sit our proprietary, adaptive cognitive ability assessment, that allows us to very accurately compare their current performance against thousands of other children in British and international schools. The assessment is completed at home and lasts approximately two hours overall. It tests children specifically in terms of the knowledge and skills required to tackle selective schools’ entrance assessments, including 11+ exams, the ISEB Pre-Test or London 11+ Consortium. Your son or daughter will be assessed in English, mathematics and reasoning.
After your child has sat the academic assessment, you will receive a topic-by-topic results breakdown. Adam and his colleagues will debrief you personally on your child’s individual results, walking you through the inferences that can be made from your son or daughter’s scores and recommending specific next steps, including a targeted learning plan with suggestions of topics or skills to practise if required.
3. Report identifying potential schools
As soon as we have your son or daughter’s academic results, the Select:ed team will use our dataset of more than 2500 information points on British schools to identify schools that are potential matches for your child, in terms of academic entry requirements and your requirements as parents, e.g. location, commute times, fees etc. A few days later you will receive your child’s personalised school shortlist report, recommending 6-8 schools meeting your parameters. This report also includes information on the schools’ exam results, academic value-add, travel times from your home and fee levels (if considering independent schools).
If you are considering selective schools, we group these schools based on your child’s academic profile and our data on schools’ real entry requirements:
reasonably safe choices for your son or daughter
‘bankable’ schools that would be challenging but realistically attainable
and those that would be an academic stretch.
Select:ed also offers a bespoke School Search and Selection service, which gives you a more detailed, balanced view of your child, including EQ, character profiling, extra-curricular interests and individual advice on cultural fit with different schools.
School Shortlisting: your questions answered
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Assessment and School Shortlisting is an online service. If you would prefer to work in person with a London-based UK education consultant then our tailored School Search and Selection service might be more suitable for you.
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The profiling data on your child is drawn from a cognitive ability assessment that your son or daughter will sit at home. The assessment is adaptive so every child gets a personalised test – it invigilates itself. The initial context-gathering call can be done over the phone or on a video call. The individual results debriefing after the academic assessment is done as a video call, allowing all members of the Select:ed consultancy team to participate.
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Yes, Assessment and School Shortlisting is a useful tool for families considering British education, as the academic assessment compares candidates to a cohort of more than 30,000 British children in selective schools, giving a very accurate view of how your child might perform in a UK school’s entrance assessment. You will receive a recommended shortlist of realistically attainable schools matched to your child’s academic profile.
International families relocating to the UK may require a more hands-on approach, including personalised school recommendations, tours of schools and school placement. Explore our UK education consultancy services for international families.
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No, the academic assessment is adaptive, which means that your child's performance is measured in comparison to others their exact age. There is no benefit to waiting till later.
Ideally, in our view, families would complete this a few months before making applications to schools so that your child can practise any areas for improvement so that they can sit entrance assessments with confidence.
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We can cover both private and state selective (grammar) schools, according to your parameters set in the initial context-gathering call. In general the academic entry requirements of grammar schools are more demanding, given the higher numbers of applicants.
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The aim of the Assessment and School Shortlisting service is helping you match your child’s applications to their academic profile – identifying schools that are ambitious and challenging but likely to be within reach in terms of academic entry requirements. This approach increases the likelihood of your child securing a place at a preferred school, but of course there are a huge number of variables with children this age.
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Of course. This service is designed to help you as parents understand which selective schools within your local area would be attainable for your son or daughter, in terms of academic entry requirements.
We do not advise on comprehensive schools’ catchment areas or a particular school’s admissions policy. As a general rule of thumb we suggest all families with children approaching 11+ transition to apply to at least a couple of local non-selective state comprehensive schools as a fall-back option, even if you are only considering grammar schools or the private sector.
This service is not your application to schools. Individual schools do not have visibility of your child’s academic data, unless you choose to share it with them; some independent schools may welcome this information to provide context on your child’s potential, strengths and weaknesses.
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Assessment and School Shortlisting is available for children aged 7 to 16 making applications to selective schools, either independent schools or grammar schools.
This service is especially useful for parents considering 11+ applications to selective schools (e.g. in London, Surrey, Buckinghamshire, Kent among others) – private schools or state grammar schools.
The academic assessment is banded into three age groups, with a shorter test for younger children. The 11+ level assessment lasts approximately two hours, comprising four shorter tests; rest breaks between each of the tests are allowed and encouraged! It is a standardised assessment that compares candidates to other children their exact age. The dataset includes over 30,000 children so the results are statistically significant.
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Our default advice is usually that at first we recommend working with your child’s current school to try and solve a problem; this is usually better than making a big change.
The Select:ed team can provide individual support for your child including School Search and Selection, coaching, and parental advice on handling schools. Please contact Adam D’Souza in confidence to discuss.