Sutton High School

Sutton High is worth a look for a family wanting solid, single-sex academics without a stuffy, tradition-bound atmosphere. Despite sitting in a borough well known for its selective state grammars, the school has built a strong identity of its own: the Good Schools Guide praised it as a place where true inclusivity trumps stuffy traditions. It is an independent girls' day school for three to eighteen, part of the Girls' Day School Trust.

It opened on Thursday 17 January 1884 with eighty girls in Park House, a Victorian villa on Cheam Road, and then spent a century growing along the street by buying the houses next door. That is why it sits on two addresses today, the senior school on Cheam Road and the prep round the corner on Grove Road, sharing a dining hall between them. Above the original front door were the words This Door Opens Outwards, and the school's logo still comes from that 1886 door.

Entry at eleven is an online test in maths, English and reasoning, then a cookie break, then a taster lesson taught by a senior school teacher. About three quarters of Year 7 comes up from the prep, so the intake from outside is small. New girls go into one of five forms of about twenty, each with two form tutors, and are paired with an older girl. One parent said the school 'is extraordinary in making neuro-diversity ordinary', another that her daughter 'has friends who live in flats and those who live in mansions'. Lunch is cramped and noisy. It suits a girl who would rather be interesting than polished.