St Margaret's Hampstead

If you are weighing up a small school for your daughter, St Margaret's Hampstead is about as small as London gets. Around 170 girls aged 4 to 16 share one welcoming house on Kidderpore Gardens, a quiet residential street in leafy Hampstead, and the school makes a point of knowing each girl as an individual. "The school knows every girl personally and knows their personality, so they can work with them individually and understand what they need," one mother told the Good Schools Guide. With sixteen or so in a junior class and small senior groups, no girl slips by unnoticed.

The school has been part of Hampstead life since 1884, when Elizabeth Tulloch, a former governess from Perthshire, opened it as one of the many small girls' schools then dotted around the area. For years it was known simply as "Miss Tulloch's", and the name St Margaret's only stuck after a brief move out of London and back again. Most of those early schools came and went within a decade or two; this one stayed, and is now in its fifth home under its fourteenth head. The novelist Daphne du Maurier was a pupil here.

What parents tend to notice is the family feel. The Good Schools Guide describes it as a tiny school with a homely feel, a cosy and grounded education delivered in a happy family atmosphere. Pupils, staff and parents talk about the place as one big household rather than an institution, which is rare for a London school and clearly part of the appeal. The current head, Sharron Shackell, keeps that personal, settled character at the centre while preparing each girl for the next stage. For a daughter who does best when she is properly known, it is worth a look.