For families making a high-stakes school decision in an unfamiliar education system. Two artifacts: the Cascais Schools Almanac, free for subscribers, and the Family Decision Briefing, commissioned for one family at €349.
Get the Almanac Commission a briefingNo referral fees. No real-estate partnerships. No school sponsorships. The desk earns one thing: the price of the briefing itself.
The Cascais Schools Desk is an editorial research practice covering seven international schools in Cascais, Estoril, and Sintra. The desk publishes two things: a free Almanac mapping the market, and a paid Briefing applying the research to one family's decision. The editor is anonymous; the methodology and sources are not.
The Cascais Schools Almanac is a structured map of the seven international schools the desk covers, built so a family can compare them on the dimensions that actually settle first-year decisions. It includes a cross-school comparison table, per-school basic facts, and the methodology and sources behind both. Read it before deciding whether the deeper analysis in the Briefing is worth commissioning.
Five pillars of deeper analysis sit in the Briefing, not the Almanac. The Almanac references each pillar where the underlying fact is public and verifiable; the analysis itself is paid:
Three of seven schools shown. The Almanac contains the full set with confidence labels for every rating.
| School | System | Real Y1 cost | Group risk (5-yr) | Top concern |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CAISL Sintra |
American + IB | ≈€16,713 + bus + lunch | Low independent non-profit | Bus from Cascais opaque |
| St. Julian's Carcavelos |
British + IB | €25,335 (lunch + bus included) | Low independent trust, 1932 | 1,200 students; size at age 5–6 |
| TASIS Portugal | Core Knowledge → IGCSE → IB | €23,140 + bus | Med TASIS network | Recent reviews trending negative |
| + four more schools in the Almanac | ||||
A short, non-exhaustive sample of how the Almanac's facts connect to the Briefing's analysis:
Enter your email and the Almanac PDF lands in your inbox. The desk will write to you again only if the Almanac itself is updated.
Your email goes to the editor. No marketing list. No follow-up sales sequence beyond the Almanac itself. You can reply to remove it at any time.
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The Almanac is a market map: what the desk knows generally about the seven schools. The Briefing is a decision memo: what the desk would say to one specific family weighing one specific decision. Different artifact, different job.
Some families read the Almanac and find they have what they need. The cross-school comparison and the per-school facts settle the question for them, and that's a good outcome. The Briefing exists for the families who read the Almanac and find that the question hasn't actually been settled, because the decision turns on factors that don't fit in a market map: a child's English starting level, a family's real time horizon in Portugal, sports or routines that can't move, the difference between which schools are affordable on paper and which are affordable once capital levies and bus and EAL are priced in.
The Briefing applies the Almanac's facts to one family's actual situation. It does this in two layers: first, by working through the five pillars of analysis the Almanac only signals, with what each pillar means for each of the seven schools and the sources behind every claim. Second, by adding five pages written after the family's intake: which schools fit, which don't, why, and what to verify on the visit. The structure is meant to make clear that this isn't a tier upgrade so much as a different category of work.
Founding edition. Limited to thirty commissioned briefings. Founding clients receive a signed cover note from the editor, and the founding-client mark on the Briefing's cover page.
Brief intake takes about ten to fifteen minutes, then a secure checkout. The desk replies within one working day to confirm intake received.
A 15-question profile of your family. Languages, time horizon, real budget, sports and routines, the specific decisions you're weighing. About twenty minutes.
The editor cross-references the verified-facts dataset against your profile. Every relevant claim is re-checked against current sources before it enters your briefing.
Five working days from completed intake. PDF, 15 pages, with a one-line cover note from the editor acknowledging the specifics of your intake.
You read the briefing, mark anything that needs sharper treatment for your case, and one revision is delivered within five working days.
Every claim in a briefing has a source: a URL, a date, a name where one exists. Where the evidence is thin or contradictory, the briefing says so directly. The rest is being careful about which sources count for what.
Every recommendation in a briefing carries a label. There are five.
There's a lot a family can't know in advance. The school picked in May 2026 won't be quite the same school by 2029: heads of section move on, owners sell, year-group cultures shift. The briefing can't fix that. What it can do is set out what's actually known right now, what isn't, and which of the unknowns are likely to bite. The family makes the call. The briefing is what's read before the call gets made.
The desk is written by one editor, not a placement agency, not a committee, not a chain of researchers. One editor means one set of priors. The methodology is published so families can judge the recommendations against their own priorities. The desk isn't embedded in school communities: closed Telegram channels, WhatsApp parent groups, and staff-room conversations sit outside what can ethically be cited, even when that's where current information actually lives. Briefings name where this matters and recommend the family talk to current parents directly.
Three things the Briefing can't tell you: the cohort (a specific Year 1 class), the fit (your child's specific personality), and the parent culture (visible at pickup, invisible online). The Briefing structures the verifiable; the family verifies the rest in person.
The desk publishes every change to the underlying dataset that's worth noting. When a fee is corrected, when a source moves, when a school's status changes, the change is logged here, dated, and visible.
Augmentation research completed. Added 5-year IB and college-placement trend for CAISL and St. Julian's, Quinta dos Ingleses development disclosure, Inspired Education €2.44bn February 2026 refinancing, Globeducate Wendel buy-in correction, Saint Dominic's two-ownership-change history. Group risk fingerprint added to Briefing.
Initial dataset published. 7 schools researched in depth, 250+ data points cross-referenced, 80+ sources.
Saint Dominic's: confirmed first post-acquisition year is 2026/27 (ISP press release, 4 Sept 2025). Group risk label revised from Med to High (short-term).
Aprendizes: admissions page updated by school to state "currently at full capacity." School moved from active consideration to passive monitor in the active dataset.
King's College Cascais: added February 2026 student review to ISD-sourced sentiment cluster. n=2 unverified, both 1.4/5; flagged as pattern-not-fact.
TASIS Portugal: bus pricing remains opt-in / price-on-request; flagged as Verification required for any briefing that includes Cascais pickup.
Each quarter the desk publishes a short note on what changed in the dataset, what new pattern is worth attention, and what coverage was started or stopped. The first letter goes out alongside the first commissioned briefings.
The letter is free. If you've already given the desk your email for the Almanac, you're subscribed by default; you can reply to remove yourself at any time. If you haven't, the form above is the same form.