Pender Education · UK boarding schools
Find the right UK school for your child.
An intelligent way for international families to discover UK boarding schools matched to their child’s ambitions, interests, budget and educational needs.
Built to make one of the biggest education decisions easier.
Student profile
Age 13 · Year 9 entry
- Currently in
- Dubai, UAE
- Entry year
- 2027
- Boarding
- Full boarding
- Interests
- Sciences, tennis
Oundle School
Northamptonshire
Sedbergh School
Cumbria
Sevenoaks School
Kent
- Within indicated budget
- Suitable year group
- Full boarding
- Tennis provision
Illustrative interface. School details shown are indicative and unverified, and fit is shown as a description rather than a score.
The problem
Choosing a school shouldn't mean searching through hundreds of websites.
International families often have to navigate fees, admissions requirements, boarding arrangements, academic pathways, extracurricular interests and application deadlines across dozens of school websites.
Pender brings those considerations together into one personalised pathway.
Too many choices
Hundreds of schools, each with different strengths and requirements.
Complex admissions
Entry years, assessments, interviews, deadlines and documentation vary between schools.
Hard to compare
Families need more than league tables. They need to understand which schools actually fit their child.
How Pender works
From family profile to school shortlist.
01
Tell us about your child
Share their age, interests, academic profile, budget, preferred location and ambitions.
02
Build their profile
Pender turns those requirements into a structured student profile.
03
Discover suitable schools
Our matching system identifies schools that align with the family's priorities.
04
Take the next step
Explore the matches, request information and move towards the admissions process.
AI-assisted school matching
Find your best-fit UK schools.
Answer ten short questions about the student and explore an illustrative shortlist of schools, with a clear explanation of why each one could fit.
Please do not enter real personal information into this demonstration. Everything runs in your browser using illustrative, unverified data. Nothing is stored by Pender and nothing is sent to a school.
Step 1 of 10
10% complete
How old will the student be at entry?
We use age to identify the right year group and entry point.
Choose an option to continue
Your information stays under your control. Pender will only share information with schools when you choose to contact them.
For families
More than a school search.
Pender is designed to help families move from uncertainty to a clear admissions pathway.
Personalised matching
Schools considered against the factors that matter to your family.
Transparent recommendations
Understand why a school has been suggested.
Admissions pathway
Keep track of requirements, deadlines and next steps.
International support
Designed around the additional considerations international families face.
Privacy & trust
Built around the trust a family places in us.
Choosing a school involves information about a child. We are designing Pender so that families share as little as possible, understand exactly how it is used, and decide when a school sees it.
Data minimisation by design
Pender is designed to minimise the personal information required to help families discover suitable schools. We ask for what matching genuinely needs — and nothing more.
Families stay in control
Families remain in control of when their information is shared with schools. Nothing is sent to a school unless a parent explicitly chooses to make an enquiry.
Honest about AI
Pender uses technology and AI-assisted tools to help identify potentially suitable schools. Recommendations are intended to assist families and do not constitute admissions decisions.
Parent-held accounts
The parent or guardian is the account holder. Children are not asked to create accounts, and a parent can review or remove their child's information.
The final admissions decision is always made by the school. Pender is an early-stage MVP: our data-processing architecture and legal documents will be reviewed before any real information about a child is collected, and we make no claim to have completed an independent privacy or compliance assessment.
The parent journey
Discover, profile, match, compare, introduce, apply.
Pender is built to be useful from the first question to the first day of term, not only at the shortlist stage.
Step 1
Discover
Understand UK boarding and independent education, and what genuinely differs between schools.
Step 2
Profile
A parent or guardian builds a structured profile of the student's requirements — no child account, no sensitive documents.
Step 3
Match
AI-assisted matching suggests schools that fit the stated requirements, with the reasoning shown in plain language.
Step 4
Compare
Compare shortlisted schools side by side: ages, boarding pattern, curriculum, indicative fees, strengths and considerations.
Step 5
Request introduction
When you choose to, Pender introduces you to the school and shares only what it needs to respond.
Step 6
Application
Track responses, assessments, deadlines and outcomes in one place through to enrolment.
Schools cannot pay to improve their position in your recommendations. Recommendations are based only on the requirements you give us and how well a school suits them.
Pender is paid by schools — either a fixed fee for a qualified introduction, or an agreed percentage of first-year tuition if a student enrols. We keep those arrangements separate from matching by design, and we will publish exactly how that separation is enforced once the matching architecture is built.
For schools
Reach international families who are actively looking for a school like yours.
Pender is building a new acquisition and admissions channel for UK schools. We help families discover suitable schools and give admissions teams better-qualified enquiries and clearer information about prospective students.
Qualified enquiries
Receive richer student profiles than a standard website enquiry.
Better matching
Help families discover your school based on genuine fit, not simply search ranking.
International recruitment
Reach families actively considering UK education.
Admissions technology
Long-term, Pender will help schools manage enquiries and guide families towards application.
We are currently speaking with a small group of UK schools about becoming founding partners.
For schools
Interested in becoming a founding Pender school?
We’re currently speaking with UK boarding schools and independent schools interested in reaching more international families through a technology-led acquisition channel.
We are currently speaking with a small group of UK schools about becoming founding partners.
About Pender
Making international school choice more intelligent.
Pender Education is building technology to make the process of finding and applying to the right school simpler for international families and more effective for schools.
Starting with UK boarding schools, Pender is focused on combining structured school information, intelligent matching and admissions technology.