Inchwise Educational Guardianship
A home that is built around the instrument
Guardianship answers one question: who is responsible for this child in Britain. For a young musician it has to answer a second one as well — what happens to the playing when the school closes, the teacher is away, and the family is eight hours ahead.
Why a musician’s week is different
A boarding school year is built around terms. A musician’s year is built around terms and around auditions, competitions, courses, exams and concerts — which fall in the gaps the school calendar leaves open.
Four of those gaps cause most of the difficulty:
- Practice does not pause for a holiday. Three weeks at Christmas with no instrument and no room to use it is three weeks a teacher then has to recover.
- The week has two timetables. Lessons, rehearsals, the practice room rota and the school day have to be reconciled by someone who understands both.
- The instrument is luggage, property and risk at once. It travels, it is insured, it is handed to an airline, it needs a workshop when something goes wrong.
- Auditions and competitions land awkwardly. They need travel, accommodation, an accompanist, a warm-up room and an adult in the building.
An ordinary guardian can handle an exeat weekend. None of the four items above is an exeat weekend.
What we do
Inchwise provides guardianship directly. We keep the two halves of the job clearly separated, because they are different obligations with different standards — and we set them out separately in the agreement and on the invoice.
Guardianship: care and safety
- A named guardian and a 24-hour emergency contact in the UK
- Accommodation for exeats, half terms and the parts of the holidays the school is closed
- Medical registration, appointments and attendance when the student is unwell
- Communication with the school, and attendance at parents’ evenings when asked
- Airport transfers and travel at the start and end of term
- Written reports to parents, and a record of every arrangement made
Music support: the professional life
- Practice during holidays. Accommodation is chosen on the condition that practice at a reasonable hour is accepted; where a home cannot take it, we arrange a room elsewhere.
- Contact with the instrumental teacher and the music department. Progress, repertoire, exam entries and timetable changes reach the parents in their own language, without the family chasing them.
- Competitions, auditions and masterclasses. Travel, accommodation, accompanist, warm-up time and an adult present on the day.
- The instrument itself. Carriage and transport, airline arrangements, insurance paperwork, and repair or set-up when it is needed.
Guardianship covers care and safety. Music support covers the professional life. They are contracted and charged separately, and a family can take the first without the second.
Where this comes from
Inchwise works with music schools, junior departments and instrumental teachers in Britain, and publishes a library of admissions guides built from what those institutions themselves publish. The same people who read a conservatoire’s audition requirements for a living are the ones who answer the phone at eleven at night.
That is the whole claim. We are not offering a warmer version of ordinary guardianship. We are offering guardianship from people who already know what a practice diary, a second-study timetable and a Grade 8 entry deadline actually are.
Who this is for
- International boarders at specialist music schools
- International students at ordinary British independent schools who are training seriously on an instrument
- Students attending a conservatoire junior department on Saturdays alongside school
- Families preparing for conservatoire entry who need support that lasts more than one application round
Start with a conversation. Tell us the school, the instrument, the year group and what the year ahead looks like. We will tell you plainly what we would take on and what we would not.