Sir Joseph Williamson's Mathematical School

If your son is the kind who lights up over a maths problem, the school Rochester families call the Math will feel like home. Sir Joseph Williamson's Mathematical School is a selective boys' grammar and one of the oldest in the area, founded in 1701 through a bequest in the will of Sir Joseph Williamson to set up a free school teaching mathematics and practical skills to local boys. It later moved from Rochester High Street to its present campus on Maidstone Road, and today teaches around 1,500 pupils, admitting boys at eleven and girls into the sixth form.

The school keeps a long strength in maths, computing and the sciences, but it sets out to grow more than academic ability. Its stated aim is to help young people become happy, confident and active citizens, ready to take a leading part in whatever they go on to do. Visitors tend to remark on the manners. Pupils come across as thoughtful, polite, courteous and respectful, and the atmosphere is calm and civil, the sort of place where boys feel safe and settled. There's a full programme of activities and steady chances to take on responsibility as they move up the school.

The Math is led by headteacher Eliot Hodges. It suits an able, motivated boy who enjoys a strongly academic environment, especially one leaning towards maths and science, and who will thrive where good manners and steady effort are simply how things are done.