Spalding High School

For a bright, motivated daughter who will do her best work in a warm, close-knit setting rather than a fiercely pressured one, Spalding High School is a reassuring choice. It is a girls' grammar serving the Lincolnshire Fens, taking girls from 11 to 18 and opening its sixth form to boys as well, with pupils coming in from across a wide rural area where farming is the local industry. The Good Schools Guide notes that the girls are the brightest around and come from varied rather than privileged backgrounds, which gives the place a refreshingly unstuffy feel. The school opened in 1920 and moved to its present Stonegate site in the 1960s; the entrance hall and corridors are still lined with school photographs going back to the 1920s, a nice touch of continuity as a new girl walks in.

The Good Schools Guide calls it a well run, successful school with confident leadership and a strong sense of community, and praises the relationships between staff and pupils. The atmosphere is purposeful, studious in class but cheerful and lively between lessons. Music, art and drama are timetabled for the younger years and most girls carry one through, and sport runs to football, netball, cricket, hockey and, slightly unusually for the area, lacrosse. Pupils stay with the same tutor as they move up the school, and parents told the Guide that the girls' happiness genuinely matters to staff.

Headmistress Michele Anderson has led the school since 2014. What parents tend to come away with is a sense that a daughter here will be known, steadied and quietly stretched.