King Edward's Witley

If the move up at eleven is the thing worrying you, King Edward's has built its answer into its buildings! Every Year 7 and Year 8, day pupil or boarder, lives and registers in Queen Mary House, which has its own entrance and its own drop-off. One parent told the Good Schools Guide it was 'a really nice transition to secondary school'. It is an independent co-educational school for eleven to eighteen, set in around a hundred acres of the Surrey Hills near Godalming, taking day pupils and boarders, full, weekly and flexi.

Its origin is not a marketing line. In 1553 Edward VI, pressed by the Bishop of London, handed over his palace at Bridewell to the City of London to house and teach the city's poorest children. The school moved to Southwark, then out to Witley in 1867, into the red brick building with the clock tower that it still occupies, and girls and boys were reunited on one site in 1952. The charity is still called Bridewell Royal Hospital, and around one pupil in ten is here on a substantially funded foundation place, funded by City livery companies and former pupils.

Every Year 7 gets a term of free tuition on an orchestral instrument and the music school on site runs about 150 lessons a week. Phones are handed in for the school day. Chapel is twice a week, Saturday mornings are for fixtures, and day pupils can stay on site until eight in the evening with a day's notice. From Year 9, children move into one of the houses and, by their own account, take it seriously. A parent told the Guide that the 'economic and racial diversity here is refreshing'.