Altrincham Grammar School for Girls

If you want your daughter stretched but also genuinely looked after, Altrincham Grammar School for Girls is the kind of place that manages both. Known to most families as AGGS, it is a selective girls' grammar in Bowdon, on the southern edge of Greater Manchester, and it happens to be the largest single-sex state grammar in the country. What strikes you is how lightly it carries that scale. The Good Schools Guide calls it "a school intent on helping able high achievers reach their starry goals," and the day-to-day feel matches that: ambitious, but warm and grounded rather than pressured, with a strong streak of service to the wider community.

Academic life is full, but it is not the whole picture. Music, sport and the creative arts run right through the timetable, and dance has a particularly strong following, with a dedicated studio and a long-established performance troupe. The school sits within the Bright Futures Educational Trust, which gives it links to a wider family of schools across the North West. Generations of former pupils have gone on to lead in their fields, and the school is open about wanting current girls to follow them.

AGGS suits a curious, hard-working girl who wants to be challenged in a school that takes pastoral care as seriously as it takes ambition. It has been led since 2014 by headteacher Stephanie Gill, a Cambridge natural sciences and maths graduate who taught across both the state and independent sectors before taking the role. The thing parents tend to mention is that their daughter comes home confident, not frazzled.