Keystone’s advisory team are experienced in providing school-specific support in preparation for school selection from nursery up to sixth form entry.
Understanding how to choose the right nursery for your child can be overwhelming. Keystone’s consultancy team are able to provide advice relating to nursery selection, giving a full overview of options and ensuring that you feel confident about the choices you are making for your child.
We work alongside nursery specialists to ensure reliable, up-to-date advice is available to families. In London, some popular nurseries require registration at birth. Some nurseries have an entry assessment and others act as feeders to some of the most competitive London pre-prep and prep schools. Our nursery application advisory support is here to reduce the stress that can so often hamper the process of finding the right nursery school for your child.
Initial consultation meeting (in person or online) - Our initial consultations enable us to understand the specific needs of your family, your objectives and key criteria for nurseries. An initial consultation with a nursery specialist will either act as a starting point for our Shortlisting or Full Nursery service or will be offered through our Hourly Consultancy service.
Nursery Shortlisting Service - Following your consultations, your specialist nursery consultant will assemble a shortlist of suitable nurseries that meet your requirements. This shortlist will outline recommended nursery school options, will provide a background on each nursery and will give a clear sense of the next steps you need to take along with any other key information.
Full Nursery Advice - If you are looking for a specialist nursery consultant to oversee your nursery search and subsequent applications then we can support this through our Full Advisory service. Within this we will shortlist your nursery options, and following discussion and confirmation of your preferred options, we will complete registrations, arrange nursery visits, and undertake any other necessary clerical work.
Ongoing support - For families looking to source the right nursery for their child, and then to look further ahead to Pre-Prep and Prep Schools, we can provide a clear educational timeline and strategy.
Ad Hoc Advice (Hourly Consultancy) - If you are looking for an unbiased perspective on nurseries, or for an experienced nursery consultant who can give some insight into a specific topic, we are able to help on an hourly basis. Before a consultation we will collect relevant information, and if applicable, you will receive a summary email with further recommendations following the meeting.
"My son received an offer from both King's House and Latymer, and in the meantime, we accepted an offer from Latymer. What an amazing achievement! You have been instrumental in getting my son to this point and we are extremely grateful."
MOTHER OF 7+ STUDENT"My daughter loves Millie and she managed to prepare her, bearing in mind that she is not at a school that prepares for the 7 Plus, successfully to pass the examinations to Highgate and Latymer.''
Mother of 7 Plus Student"Just to let you know that my son has got an offer from St Paul's Junior's, which we have happily accepted."
Mother of 8+ StudentBook an initial free consultation with our consultancy team.
How to Support Your Child at Home with Early Reading
What is the best way to teach children to read? Teaching reading requires children to master two skills; phonics and language comprehension. They need to be able to decode by blending sounds in words to read them and they need to comprehend what the word means in the given context. In school, children will be taught these two skills at the same time. Phonics is used to teach word reading. Phonics connects letters (graphemes) with the sounds they make (phonemes).
A Guide to Starting Primary School
Starting primary school is a big step in your child’s life and marks the beginning of an exciting new chapter. This guide gives you a detailed overview on preparing your child for school, recommended reading lists plus some activities and ideas that may be helpful for supporting your child with the transition.
Webinar: How to choose a Nursery School - Q & A with a nursery specialist
In this webinar Harriet, Keystone's Director of Education, and Sabine Hook, a specialist nursery consultant, discussed the following key questions: How do you decide what the best option is for your child? When should parents start thinking about nursery schools and when do they need to register? How do you start the search and What do you recommend looking for in a nursery? What questions should parents ask when visiting a nursery? Is the Ofsted report a good place to find out.
Webinar: A Level vs IB (Inc. GCSE vs. IGCSE)
Keystone’s Managing Director, Ed Richardson, was joined by Jenny McGowan, Keystone's Director of Asia, to discuss the similarities and differences between IGCSEs and GCSEs as well as A Levels and the IB. They also covered how students might choose subjects to study at the different levels.