Notre Dame School

One parent told the Good Schools Guide that Notre Dame 'has been an antidote to the whole 11+ treadmill', which is worth hearing if the treadmill is what you are on. It is an independent Catholic day school for girls, from two to eighteen, in twenty-six acres at Cobham in Surrey. It is academically selective, but the assessment day is deliberately unhurried: an hour online, half an hour of creative writing, a ten-minute chat with a member of staff, and a quarter of an hour of something to do for fun.

The school opened in 1937 with seven pupils, all of them boarders, in Burwood House, and has not moved since. The house is late eighteenth century and listed, with a classical relief of the battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs above the front door. The order behind it, the Company of Mary Our Lady, was founded in Bordeaux in 1607 by Jeanne de Lestonnac, a widow with five children and a niece of the essayist Montaigne, whose ideas about learning by experience the school still cites. Cobham is its only school in the UK.

The chapel sits in the middle of the main building and there is a chaplain on site, but the school says plainly that it welcomes families of all faiths and none, and faith is not part of the entry criteria. Every Year 7 girl is given a Big Sister, backed by trained mentors from Years 10 and 12, and there is a therapy dog. The Guide describes polite pupils who 'take manners very seriously, holding doors open for each other, no pushing or charging about', and says the small scale and the Catholic character make the place feel protected from the outside world, which draws some parents and puts others off. It suits a girl who wants school to feel steady.