The King's School

If your son is the sort of boy who asks how things work and won't let a problem go, The King's School in Grantham is a place that knows what to do with him. It is a boys' grammar with one of the longest histories of any school in the country, and that heritage is worn lightly rather than for show. A young Isaac Newton was a pupil here in the 1650s, and by tradition he carved his name into a wall of what is now the school library. Boys who walk those corridors today are following a long line of curious minds.

The school sits on Brook Street in the centre of Grantham, with some buildings dating back to the fifteenth century, so the sense of continuity is something children feel rather than something the prospectus has to claim. It is state-funded with no fees and selects through the Lincolnshire 11+. The all-boys setting runs from Year 7 to Year 11, and the sixth form is co-educational, which gives older pupils a fresh mix of company for their final two years before university.

King's suits an academically able boy who takes to a serious, settled approach to learning and a family who values that sense of roots stretching back across the centuries. What tends to stay with families is the feeling that their son is somewhere that takes his thinking seriously, and is happy to let him grow into the kind of pupil who, generations from now, someone might still want to follow.