Tormead School

Tormead suits a girl who is quietly ambitious and would rather get on with the work than compete for attention. It is an independent day school for girls in Guildford, Surrey, taking pupils from four to eighteen, with the senior school starting at eleven. The buildings sit on Cranley Road, a short walk from the town centre, so the feel is town rather than country estate.

The school began in 1905 with a handful of girls taught in a private house, and has been on its Cranley Road site since the First World War. Boarders slept there until 1988. Every girl belongs to one of four houses, named for Livingstone, Nelson, Nightingale and Wellington, and the house calendar is taken seriously: an annual House Music competition now past its tenth year, and a House Fashion and Dance show for which girls sew the costumes, build the sets and choreograph the routines themselves. The school's own history still records the first non-uniform day, in 1983, because a long-serving senior mistress turned up dressed as a life-sized teddy bear.

The Good Schools Guide describes 'a warm and welcoming environment with a town centre edge that makes for grounded girls who want to achieve', and credits the school with 'academic substance and true soul'. Pastoral care is what parents tend to raise first: a wellbeing centre staffed by nurses and two in-house counsellors, and a head who says plainly that girls learn best when they are happy and valued. It suits a girl who wants to be known by name, who will throw herself into a house dance rehearsal on a wet Tuesday, and who needs somewhere that will take her seriously without making her anxious about it.