Wimbledon High School

If you want your daughter to leave school still loving to learn, Wimbledon High School is built around exactly that. It is an independent day school for girls in south-west London, taking girls from age 11 through to the sixth form, and good transport links mean families come from right across the area. The tone is best caught by one pupil the Good Schools Guide spoke to: "It is cool to be clever and it is fine not to be perfect."

The school opened in 1880 with twelve girls and a headmistress of just 29, founded on the plain belief that girls have minds as fine as anyone's and worth educating. It still belongs to the Girls' Day School Trust, and the two ideals it started with, a love of learning and a care for others, are still at its centre. Today it talks about "playful scholarship", the idea that fun and serious work belong together and that girls do their best thinking when they feel free to ask questions and occasionally get things wrong. The Good Schools Guide found pupils "erudite and confident but without a hint of arrogance". A small tradition sums up the spirit nicely: every November the school marks its birthday with apple-green cupcakes, the apple having been its emblem from the earliest days.

Wimbledon High suits a curious, capable girl who will take to a school that is academically serious and genuinely warm, and that wants her to enjoy the work as much as do well at it. For the right girl, it is a place where being clever is something to enjoy rather than hide.