Family education advisory.

i.What an advisory is.

A family education advisory is the standing seat at the table, across the years, for the academic life of the children of the household.

Most households of standing have someone for everything. The right lawyer. The right banker. The right doctor. They do not, often, have someone whose only brief is the academic life of the children. That is the seat we hold.

We are not a school. We are not a tutoring agency. We are the person the chief of staff calls when the school has written about something difficult. The person who sits in the meeting after the report card. The person who explains, in plain English, what an admissions officer in a particular city is actually looking for.

ii.Where we are most useful.

• The first weeks of a school transition
• The decision to move a child between schools
• The summer before a senior school year
• The pastoral conversation a family does not want to have alone
• The sibling whose path will be different from the others
• The relocation, planned or unplanned
• The senior school that has written something the family is unsure how to read
• The university year that has not gone as expected

iii.Across siblings.

It is rare that a household has only one child in education. It is more common that there are two, three or four, on different curricula, in different countries, at different stages of focus.

An education advisory holds the whole picture. It makes sure that the eldest does not consume every consideration. It makes sure that the youngest is not under-attended. It makes sure that what is decided for one child has been considered against what will be needed for the others, in the years ahead.

iv.Mobility and relocation.

Households of standing move. We help families plan the academic dimension of a relocation before the relocation itself is committed.

v.Working with the family office.

Most engagements at this level are not commissioned by the principal of the household directly. They are commissioned by the chief of staff, the head of the family office or the household director. We are accustomed to that.

The advisory operates with the formality the office expects. Engagement letters. Quarterly reports for the office's records. A single named principal at our end. Where a household requires a confidentiality agreement, we sign theirs without comment.

Where the office wishes to keep the principal of the household at one remove from the work, we do that. Where the principal wants to be in every conversation, we do that. We adapt to the household's protocol, not the other way around.