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For international schools

Support for one child becomes capacity for the next.

Inclusion audits, implementation support and teacher CPD for international schools. One professional making sure leadership, teachers, families and specialists work from the same plan.

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Why schools call

Most schools do not call because a child is failing. They call because a child is in the room, coping, and everyone senses that the day is costing more than it should.

  • The report is on the SENCo’s desk

    A clinical assessment arrived, with recommendations written for a clinic. Nobody has turned it into what happens in period three.

  • The second timetable

    Underneath the academic timetable runs another one: arrive on time, find the right book, read the unspoken rule, keep the feelings off your face. For some children it is harder than the lessons. It is never graded, only judged.

  • Support waits for a crisis

    Flexibility tends to arrive once the distress is undeniable. That rewards falling apart and quietly penalises the child who held it together the longest.

  • Believed late

    The criteria most schools work with were shaped by the visible cases. A quiet, high-achieving or masking child often waits a long time to be taken seriously, and by then the pattern has set.

  • One SENCo, a whole school

    The capacity to do this properly usually rests with one or two people. When they are stretched, the support plans exist on paper and nowhere else.

Usually the adults around the child are working from different pictures, and the school day is measuring more than it claims to. Both are fixable, and both are the work we do.

One child. Three systems. One plan.

Around every struggling learner sit three groups of adults. Each sees a different part of the picture, and all three are doing their jobs. The difficulty lives in the space between them.

  • Family

    • History and daily routines
    • What home actually looks like
    • What has been tried before
    • What the household can carry

  • School

    • Learning behaviour in class
    • Curriculum and exam demands
    • Peer context and performance
    • What is feasible in a school day

  • Clinical

    • Formal diagnosis where needed
    • Specialist assessment findings
    • Therapy recommendations
    • Input beyond the educational scope

Clinical recommendations stay inside their PDF. School feedback never reaches the specialist who wrote them. Parents translate between everyone, in a system and often a language that is not their own, while home and school act on different assumptions.

Bold Advisory is the layer between the three: one professional making sure family, school and specialists work from the same information towards the same practical plan.

Closing those gaps is not an add-on to the work. It is the work.

What that changes for a school

Meetings get shorter, because parents arrive prepared. Referrals get sharper, because triage sorts the few who need the clinical route from the many who do not. Reports get used, because someone turns them into classroom strategy. And the school stops managing every external professional itself, because someone owns the alignment.

How an engagement runs

The same shape underneath every engagement, whether it lasts one visit or a school year.

  1. See where you stand

    A structured read of what is already in place: policies, provision, data, and what actually happens in classrooms. The aim is to find where effort is being spent without return.

  2. Align the adults

    We turn reports into plain language and make sure leadership, teachers, families and specialists are describing the same child.

  3. Build the plan

    One prioritised plan: what changes in the classroom, what changes in the process, what is realistic this term, and who owns each piece.

  4. Build capacity

    Plans fail in week three, not on day one. We stay alongside the SENCo and teachers while routines take hold, with coaching, CPD and a hand on the policy work.

  5. Review and hand over

    We check what is working, retire what is not, and step back as the school’s own capacity grows. The aim is a school that needs us less each term.

Some schools need one focused visit and a clear plan. Most need a term or two of steady support. The structure flexes; the direction does not.

How we rate your school

Both audits use the same scale and the same eight dimensions. The Snapshot rates them from a one-day sample; the Full Review rates them with an evidence table each. A Snapshot tells you whether the Review is worth commissioning.

Four levels

  1. 1 Absent

    Nothing systematic in place.

  2. 2 Emerging

    Exists on paper, or depends on one or two people.

  3. 3 Established

    Consistent, documented practice across most staff.

  4. 4 Embedded

    Reviewed on a cycle, evidenced, and improving itself.

Eight dimensions

  • Leadership and policy
  • Identification and referral
  • Classroom practice
  • Staff capacity and CPD
  • Family partnership
  • Student voice and wellbeing
  • Data and review
  • Access arrangements and transitions

A rating is not a verdict. Most schools sit at Emerging on several dimensions, often with pockets of Embedded practice that depend on one exceptional teacher. The point of the scale is to make that visible, so the school can decide what to build on and what to formalise before the person holding it together moves on.

The scale is the same in every report we write. A school that commissions a Snapshot this year and a Full Review next year gets a like-for-like comparison.

Formats

Six ways in, all built on the same journey. If you are unsure which fits, that is a normal first conversation. Some schools need one audit and a good plan. We will tell you which one you are.

Inclusion Snapshot

A one-day health check: where does your school actually stand?

Where this sits in the journey

  1. See where you stand (included)
  2. Align the adults (not included)
  3. Build the plan (included)
  4. Build capacity (not included)
  5. Review and hand over (not included)

Before the visit we read what already exists; nothing is created for us. Schools share what they have, agreed case by case: policies, the provision map, anonymised support plans, attendance and attainment data, and any parent or staff surveys.

On the day: interviews with leadership and the SENCo, a learning walk across both phases, two focused lesson observations in primary and two in secondary, a check-back on documents and data, and an exit debrief with leadership before we leave the building.

What you receive

  • A rating of all eight dimensions on the four-level scale, marked as sample-based.
  • A prioritised action plan: what to change first, and what to leave alone.
  • A recommended staff-CPD plan built from what we saw on the day.
  • An honest answer to whether a Full Inclusion Review is worth commissioning at all.
Best for, timing and format

Best for

  • A new head of inclusion or SENCo in post who wants an outside read before setting priorities.
  • Rising numbers of supported students without a plan that has kept pace.
  • A board or owner asking “where do we stand” and expecting an answer with evidence.
  • Deciding whether a larger review is needed at all.

The report lands within two weeks, followed by a 60-minute call in the week after.

A where-do-we-stand read, not accreditation evidence. On-site days are available in some locations; a remote-led format is offered where they are not.

Full Inclusion Review

Two days on site, built to be cited.

Where this sits in the journey

  1. See where you stand (included)
  2. Align the adults (included)
  3. Build the plan (included)
  4. Build capacity (not included)
  5. Review and hand over (not included)

The same document set as the Snapshot, plus short anonymous questionnaires sent a week ahead to every family on the SEN register, to staff and to older students. Questionnaires give breadth; the conversations on site give the patterns and the quotes.

Over two days: observations across both phases, six to eight conversations with teachers and teaching assistants, four to six parent conversations, a small-group conversation with secondary students (with consent), leadership and SENCo interviews, a document check-back and an exit debrief.

What you receive

  • All eight dimensions rated on the four-level scale, each with an evidence table.
  • The findings mapped against published IB and CIS expectations, so the document can be cited.
  • A prioritised action plan with owners and a term-by-term sequence, plus a staff-CPD plan.
  • Patterns and anonymised quotes from parents, students and staff that leadership can use.
Best for, timing and format

Best for

  • Twelve to eighteen months before an accreditation visit, while there is still time to act.
  • A Snapshot that raised flags leadership wants to understand properly.
  • A recurring pattern of parent complaints about support.
  • A school that has grown fast, with provision that has not grown with it.

The report lands within three weeks, followed by a 60-minute call in the week after.

Where two on-site days are not available, a remote-led format with video observations and conversations is offered.

Adaptation Load Audit

One learner, one school day: where the adapting happens, and who carries it.

Where this sits in the journey

  1. See where you stand (included)
  2. Align the adults (included)
  3. Build the plan (included)
  4. Build capacity (not included)
  5. Review and hand over (not included)

Most support conversations ask what the child cannot do. This audit asks a different question: at every point in the school day, who is adapting, how often, and at what cost?

A school day is a chain of touchpoints: arrival, transitions, seating, noise, how tasks are set, homework, breaks. At each one, somebody absorbs the gap between the child and the default. Usually it is the child, through masking and exhaustion, or the teacher, through an informal workaround nobody wrote down. The audit maps that load, scores it, and shows which parts the school can remove by design rather than by effort.

Read
Timetable, support plan, and any reports that already exist.
Listen
Short interviews with the SENCo, the class teacher, the parents, and the child in an age-appropriate form.
Watch
A day log kept by the teacher across one school week, or half a day on site where available.
Map and score
Every touchpoint rated for load, frequency, who carries it, and how hard it is to fix.

What you receive

  • An adaptation map of the child’s day, showing where the load sits and on whom.
  • A ranked redesign list: high load, low effort first. Most items cost nothing.
  • A written summary the SENCo can drop straight into the child’s support plan.
  • A feedback session with school and parents, so the changes start the same week.
Timing and format

Why schools commission it: a list of concrete levers inside the school’s own routines, ranked by impact per effort, and a first honest look at how much load currently sits with the teachers, unnamed.

Commissioned by the school, on its own or after an Inclusion Snapshot or Full Inclusion Review. A few weeks from first documents to feedback session. The on-site half day is available in some locations; the remote format works everywhere.

Inclusion Partner

One professional alongside your inclusion team while the plan takes hold.

Where this sits in the journey

  1. See where you stand (not included)
  2. Align the adults (not included)
  3. Build the plan (not included)
  4. Build capacity (included)
  5. Review and hand over (included)

An audit tells a school what to do. It cannot make it happen. The months after are where things quietly succeed or quietly stall, and they are the months most schools go through alone.

Inclusion Partner Essential
Remote. Regular coaching for the SENCo or head of inclusion, a standing review of provision as cases move, and a channel for staff questions between visits. Priority response, and the policy documents kept current as practice changes.
Inclusion Partner Growth
Everything in Essential, plus around one on-site day a month where available and one CPD slot each term. For schools that want the audit findings implemented with someone in the building.
Timing and format

Six months minimum, because provision does not change inside a half-term. The first months are usually intensive: cases, meetings and decisions arrive together. After that, most schools settle into a lighter rhythm and step back further as their own capacity grows.

Why continuity beats one-off reports: the value is in the thread. Someone who read the last report, sat in the last review, and notices when this term’s practice contradicts last term’s plan.

Accreditation Readiness Sprint

All five steps in ninety days.

Where this sits in the journey

  1. See where you stand (included)
  2. Align the adults (included)
  3. Build the plan (included)
  4. Build capacity (included)
  5. Review and hand over (included)

The flagship, for schools with an IB or CIS visit on the calendar and a gap between what the framework expects and what the school can currently evidence.

Audit and gap analysis
A full review against the published expectations, rated on the eight dimensions. The gap list becomes the work plan.
Build
Policy suite, provision maps, referral pathways and review cycles, co-built with leadership in weekly working sessions, so the documents describe what the school actually does.
Train
A three-workshop CPD series runs alongside, so staff learn the new system as it takes shape.
Evidence and hand over
An accreditation-evidence pack, organised the way visitors read it, and a review cadence the school can keep running without us.
Timing and format

What you finish with is not a folder. It is a system your staff understand because they built it, and a set of documents that describe what actually happens.

Ninety days, weekly check-in cadence, on-site elements where available. Schools that have completed a Snapshot or Full Review in the previous twelve months start from that report.

Teacher CPD

The audit finds the gaps. CPD closes them, with the people who are in the room every day.

Where this sits in the journey

  1. See where you stand (not included)
  2. Align the adults (not included)
  3. Build the plan (not included)
  4. Build capacity (included)
  5. Review and hand over (not included)

Every method has been used in a real room before it reaches yours. They come from a special-education practice run since 2017 and from work in some of the hardest inclusion environments there are, and they are built for rooms with thirty children and one adult.

Single workshop day
One focused day on site, built from what the audit found. Typical themes: the second timetable, the quiet coper, low-cost classroom design, reading a clinical report.
Three-part neuroinclusion series
Three workshops across one term, with practice tasks in between. Teachers try something, come back, compare notes. This is the format that changes habits rather than opinions.
Whole-staff INSET day
For the whole school, including support staff and leadership. One shared language and one shared picture of what inclusion asks of a school day.
Timing and format

Every session comes back to one line: present is not the same as included. A child can be seated and passing while absorbing a cost that never reaches the school record. CPD is where staff learn to see it.

Sessions run on site where available and by video elsewhere. Content is adapted to the phase, the curriculum and what the audit surfaced.

Roles and responsibilities

Clear boundaries are part of trustworthy advice, especially for a school accountable to parents, a board and an accrediting body.

Who you are working with

Portrait of Daniel Kühne
Daniel Kühne, founder

School work at Bold Advisory is personally led by Daniel Kühne, a German state-qualified special-education teacher (Second State Examination), formerly a tenured civil servant authorised to assess learning-support needs in the German state system. Since 2017 he has built and run Lerninstitut Zukunftsdenker in Cologne: around fifteen learning therapists at any one time, five partner schools, and 100 to 120 children supported every school year, as an approved provider under the city’s publicly funded education scheme. The same practice advises employers on workplace neuroinclusion in the UK, the US and Germany. Sessions run in English or German.

The professional boundary

Bold Advisory provides the educational layer: screening, translation, planning, implementation and coordination. We are not psychologists or physicians, and we do not diagnose conditions such as ADHD or autism. Where a child needs the clinical route, we say so early, help the family reach the right professional prepared, and make sure the report that comes back turns into classroom strategy.

How we work with families

Our default is parent-led. We prepare parents so they walk into your meetings knowing what to ask and what the answers mean. Prepared parents make for shorter, better meetings. Where direct contact between us and the school helps, it can be arranged separately in some locations.

What we ask of the school

A named contact, usually the SENCo. Documents shared ahead of any visit. Honest answers, including about what is not working. And a willingness to change the day, not only the child. Student data stays anonymised in everything we write; names never leave the school.

One professional cannot be the whole answer, and should not pretend to be. What one professional can do is make sure the whole answer fits together.

Start with a conversation.

The first step is a conversation about your school and one child you have in mind, not a sales call. You tell us what you are seeing; we tell you plainly which format fits, which may be smaller than you expected.

Book a 30-minute calldaniel@boldadvisory.co

Download the school guide(PDF, 13 pages)

Engagements in Southeast Asia are contracted through our partner Kigumi Group Limited, Hong Kong. Proposals, agreements and invoicing run through Kigumi; the advisory work itself is delivered by Bold Advisory.