The King's School, Chester

If your child rows, or might, this is a school where that is far from niche! The boat club dates from 1883, the school has its own boathouse on the Dee in the middle of Chester, around 160 pupils row, and it starts in Year 3. King's is an independent co-educational day school for four to eighteen on a thirty-three acre campus on the southern edge of the city. Year 7 is called Removes, and entry is by examination each January.

Henry VIII founded it in 1541, on the dissolution of St Werburgh's Abbey, which became Chester Cathedral. The motto has been carried ever since: Rex dedit, benedicat Deus, the King gave it, may God bless it. The school spent roughly four centuries in the monks' old refectory in the cathedral precinct before outgrowing it, took a 999-year lease on the Wrexham Road site, and moved out in 1960, when the Queen Mother opened it. It still goes back for a cathedral service every term.

It has been fully co-educational since 2003, girls having first joined the sixth form in 1998, and the infant school opened in 2015, so a girl and a boy applying at eleven are applying to exactly the same thing. Pastoral care runs through tutors and heads of house, with a buddy system and wellbeing nurses who are trained mental health professionals. The Good Schools Guide says the school 'consistently delivers on academic results while not being afraid to look ahead and embrace change'. It suits a child who wants an old school that is not stuck in it.