The UK's Cricket and Education specialists
School search guide
A practical guide for overseas families who want to find a UK boarding school where education and cricket sit side by side. It covers entry points, costs, what schools look for, how to build a shortlist and how Criced matches your child to the right school — free of charge to families.
11+, 13+ and 16+ are the main UK entry years. Choosing the right one shapes everything else — curriculum, boarding house, scholarship eligibility and how long your child has to develop before university.
Full boarding is typically £13,000–£19,000 per term, plus guardianship, flights, insurance and uniform. Knowing your ceiling early stops you chasing schools that will never work.
Schools review recent reports, an entrance assessment and, where needed, an English test. A realistic academic match matters more than a famous name.
Match footage, season data and a coach reference tell a school far more than a CV. We verify all of it before a profile is sent, which is why our introductions are taken seriously.
Compare coaching, facilities, fixtures, boarding culture, distance from an international airport and pastoral care. Three to five well-matched schools beat twenty speculative applications.
Registration, assessment day or online trial, scholarship interview, offer, deposit, CAS and Child Student visa, guardianship. Criced walks you through each stage to arrival.
Visas, travel, term dates and school expectations differ by market. Read the guide written for your family.
Start with your child's age, academic record and cricket standard, then shortlist boarding schools whose entry point, curriculum and sports programme match. Criced does this matching for you: we verify the profile, approach schools directly and only introduce families to schools with a genuine track record with international pupils.
Look for a dedicated cricket professional on staff, indoor nets, a full block-fixture list, county or franchise links and evidence of pupils progressing to county age-group cricket. Our school profiles set out exactly these details for each partner school.
Twelve to eighteen months before the intended entry date. Registration, assessments, scholarship trials, offers and visa processing all take time, and the strongest cricket awards are usually decided a full year ahead of entry.
The introduction call and school matching cost families nothing. We are paid by the schools we work with, so our advice to you is about fit rather than fees.
Yes. Most schools we work with offer sport, all-rounder or academic awards, often combined with means-tested bursaries. Awards usually cover a percentage of fees and always require academic suitability alongside playing ability.
Your child's date of birth, current school and recent reports, English level, match footage and batting or bowling data, plus your preferred entry year and budget. With those six things we can produce a realistic shortlist quickly.
Yes. Girls' cricket is the fastest-growing sport in UK independent schools and we run a dedicated girls' pathway with schools whose girls' boarding and cricket programmes are genuinely established.
Send us a few details and we will come back to you personally with an honest view and a first shortlist.