Derby High School

If you have heard of Derby High as a girls' school, that changed in 2019, when the senior school started taking boys. It is now co-educational throughout. It is an independent day school in Littleover on the edge of Derby, taking children from three to eighteen, with somewhere under seven hundred across the whole school in purpose-built buildings on one site. Girls still outnumber boys, which is the legacy of the older school. Year 7 and the sixth form are the two main points of entry from outside.

It opened in January 1892 in a semi-detached house on Osmaston Road, spent the war years out at Mackworth House and moved to Littleover in 1957. Year 7 is where the school makes its case. Every subject is taught by a specialist from the first week, the three sciences are taught separately from the start, and children sample French, German and Spanish for a term each before choosing two to carry on. The 11+ is a set of nationally standardised papers in English, maths and reasoning in the autumn term, with an informal interview and a reference from the current school.

The day runs from half past eight to a quarter to four, with a seventy-minute lunch 'hour' that carries most of the clubs: retro gaming, mindfulness, eco, craft, choirs, a Year 7 science club, cricket and tennis, a maths drop-in. The whole school eats together. Supervised waiting runs to half past five, which matters if you work. Every Year 6 leaver walks out of the junior building through a corridor of pupils and staff applauding them. It suits a child who would rather be one of a few hundred than one of a thousand, and who will take up more than one of those clubs.