Notting Hill and Ealing High School

If your daughter is curious and quietly ambitious, the kind of girl who lights up when a lesson goes somewhere unexpected, Notting Hill & Ealing High School is built around her. Known to everyone as NHEHS, it is an independent day school for girls on Cleveland Road in Ealing, west London, taking them from age 4 through to 18 with a junior school feeding the senior school and sixth form. It belongs to the Girls' Day School Trust, the family of schools set up to give girls a serious academic education, and its own story reaches back to 1873.

What parents tend to notice first is the warmth. The head is clear that girls do not have to choose between academic ambition and a supportive community, and visitors remark on an atmosphere where girls genuinely encourage one another. The school wants more than good marks from them, setting out aims that run from an inspiring academic culture through to confident self-expression, ethical leadership and a habit of looking beyond the school gates through charity and volunteering. Life outside lessons is busy, with drama, a full programme of concerts and a wide spread of clubs and trips, and the school recently welcomed a school dog named Summer who has quickly become part of daily life.

NHEHS suits an able, curious girl who will enjoy a single-sex setting designed to build confidence and the nerve to take academic risks, alongside pastoral care that knows her as a person. It is led by headteacher Mrs Allison Saunders. The girls themselves show a real love of learning and a desire to grow their own aptitudes and interests, which is rather the point of the place.