The Queen's School

Chester has two old independent schools and they are nothing like each other. Queen's is the Victorian one: a girls' day school of about 380, from three to eighteen, built up against the city walls. It got its name in 1882, when Queen Victoria, its first patron, decreed that the school be styled the Queen's School. It had opened four years earlier as the Chester School for Girls, with sixteen pupils on the first day.

The senior school stands on the site of the old city gaol and house of correction, in a listed building of 1881 with an ornate steepled belfry that you can look down on from the wall walk. The lower school is about a mile away on Liverpool Road. Entry at eleven is a single day: around two hours of computer-based assessments in English, maths and reasoning, then lunch and team activities alongside the current Year 6.

What is unusual here is how far in advance the school works to make the move from Lower to Senior School feel familiar for its own girls. The Saturday Series is a two-year programme of themed Saturday mornings for girls in Years 4, 5 and 6, designed to build confidence and connections long before Year 7 begins: languages one term, a maths and computing morning called Spy School the next, then history and drama. Clubs run to astronomy, ancient Greek and women's history, several of them started by the girls themselves. A counsellor drops in at Monday lunchtimes. Entry to Year 7 itself is still by formal assessment for every applicant, whether she has been at the Lower School or is joining from elsewhere — the Saturday Series simply means girls already in the school arrive at that point having spent two years settling in socially, not just academically. One parent told the Good Schools Guide, "There is no stereotyping around subjects. That mentality does not exist." It suits a girl who wants to try things without being watched.