ABOUT
Barle is a consultancy firm that specializes in the education sector. Our consultants have a deep knowledge and understanding of independent schools and the challenges they face. We work with school administrators to develop appropriate strategies and plans to make their schools more successful. Our goal is to help schools provide the best possible education to their students.
OUR TEAM
Fiona Robinson
Founder and Consultant
Fiona has BA(Hons) in Sociology and Philosophy from Exeter University and focussed on psychology and the sociology of education. Fiona trained as a special needs teacher under Professor Beve Hornsby at the Roehampton Institute and specialised in dyslexia. In 1992 she completed the Instrumental Enrichment Trainer course at the Hornsby Institute and in 1994 ran the Philosophy for Children course with Robin Freeland.
She has worked as a peripatetic teacher in many independent schools across West Sussex and Hampshire. In 1994 she set up her own prep school, which she grew to 180 children. At that time, she also acquired two nurseries, expanded the age range from 0 to 5yrs, ran all year around and grew the business to five nurseries. She then added an after-school club and holiday activities taking children up to the age of 16yrs. In 1995 she set up the Childrens Learning Centre, an assessment and coaching centre for children with reading and learning difficulties. In 2006 she sold her prep-school to Cognita Schools.
Fiona then set up her own educational consultancy and has been helping parents to find the best school for their child. She has extensive experience of visiting schools and helping parents find the ideal school to fit their child. Using this experience, she also helps organise and interpret parent surveys for schools.
Charles Robinson
Founder and Consultant
After reading engineering with maths at university, Charles started his career in the Royal Navy as a submarine navigator. On leaving he completed his MBA at Cranfield and then worked in a variety of management roles in small and large companies, including the Turnaround Group of PwC and running four regulated business units for Capita plc. In 1995, with his wife and partners, he helped start a prep school in Hampshire. In 2006 it was sold to Cognita and Charles then worked for Cognita for five years. As Cognita’s Development Director he was responsible for acquisitions across the UK, Europe and Middle East. He bought 20 schools for Cognita and evaluated most European and Middle Eastern countries.
In 2012, with colleagues, he was a founder director of International Schools Partnership. This group was scaled from nothing to 50 schools, 48,000 children and 7,500 staff over nine years. Charles was responsible for all acquisition strategy and execution. He led the country entries into LATAM, US, Europe, GCC and SE Asia, spending significant time in multiple countries. He also led the early work on market entry into India. In 2021 the group was refinanced for €2Bn and Charles retired from ISP.
He not only led the sale of his own school to Cognita but also advised another owner on the sale of their school to a PE fund. With his experience at Cognita and ISP, Charles has bought about 70 schools across the world.
More recently he has advised a number of UK schools and potential partners on setting up UK / overseas partnership deals. He is also an investor in an African K-12 company.