Which independent girls' school is the classiest in the UK?

It might still be applicable for boys, but the very academic girls schools on the list won’t get you anywhere without a good degree or existing non school related connections, and the non academic boarding schools won’t mean anything outside a very small social circle.

It's interesting how OP has specified "Girl's Schools" yet there's a few posters trying to add Co-Ed to the list.

I know someone who went to Francis Holland and then onto Wycombe Abbey - she's a complete and utter snob, thinks money can buy you anything you want and that working-day rules don't apply to her.

"Daddy has an 19million pound mansion which I live in rent free, how could people be struggling on minimum wage; they just need to manage their money better".

She's been hell to have as a colleague.

Whilst I doubt she represents the entire alumnus population of both of those schools we are currently looking and neither FH school is on the list of potentials.

So glad I live in a country where this old boys school stuff doesn't exist. Yes some schools are private and schools have differing reputations but putting a national list like this together would be impossible.

One thing to bear in mind - if Russian sanctions kick in, some of those schools are massively over-exposed and they might keel over, especially if there’s a shift in Chinese recruitment patterns at the same time. Always choose a school with a diverse income stream!

Woollystockings, if we were looking for a girls’ boarding school now I would be very careful to choose somewhere where U.K. students were clearly im the majority. If you look at places like CLC they increasingly are crowded out by girls from Shanghai and Beijing, some of them out of their chronological ages groups, so as much as 2-3 years older than British girls in the same class. If there are only a limited number of British girls boarding, it makes visiting other pupils at weekends and in the holidays hard, and girls get quite isolated. Also if there are no other families near to you using the school, there’s no possibility of car shares. It becomes a much more transactional form of education.

I don’t think there is an equivalent to boys schools because the old school tie doesn’t operate in the same way.

When I was at school in London social cachet depended on going clubbing, but the school didn’t teach anyone how to get into those kinds of clubs.

Pulled DD out of Woldingham after a long family association with it. It wasn’t academic enough for her and they were incredibly pretentious - they tried to get us to dress up ‘as for Ascot, but without hats’ for an Open Day once to listen to some rambling speeches and a quite frankly awful school orchestra in a tent, and then we all clapped girls who had got the same broadly OK GCSE results that they would have done at a local comprehensive. Their idea of extra-curriculum activities was taking the girls shopping in Surrey at the weekend, every weekend. The girls DD brought home to stay were generally a bit silly and parochial, couldn’t cope with adults, did that whispering behind the hands thing, very irritating and DD dropped them for more sophisticated friends after she left. Probably a great school for the female equivalent of Tim nice but dim IMVHO. But really not that smart any longer.

I'm amazed you all know so much about schools. I'd say CLC was the poshest as I've heard of that one. That's about it.

Queen Margaret's - in Edinburgh? Just MC I think, quite academic

I think she means Queen Margaret’s School for Girls near York, which is middling academic but very smart.

Fettes and Gordonstoun could be added to list for some Scottish diversity.

@Kilimanjaro97 I always wished I could have gone to Whyteleafe!! I loved those books!

Regardless of that I still see it in top place.

Well it isn’t, because they much prefer you to be RC, which limits the intake

Cheltenham Ladies' - academic, socially smart-ish. Quite tough.

St Mary's Ascot - academic. Very socially smart. Small. nurturing.
Downe House - very academic. Tough. Socially smart.
St Paul's Girls - very academic, very pressured, but a day school. Some elements of grandeur but mostly MC competitive.
Wycombe Abbey - very academic, pressured, socially elite.

Benenden - moderately academic. Socially quite smart.
Heathfield - not very academic. Socially smart.
Tudor Hall - dunno so much about this one - middling academically I think.
Sherborne Girls - quite academic, not especially grand. Nurturing.
Roedean - not especially grand. Middling academic.
Francis Holland SW1 - very socially smart, not super academic
St Mary's Calne - very academic, small tough, seems to be have been knocked of the most fashionable academic girls school perch by Wycombe, probably because it’s not very visually attractive and it’s tiny
Francis Holland NW1 - a bit more academic, a bit less grand than the other one
St George's Ascot - middling both ways
St Swithun's - more of a local MC school
City of London Girls - academic, not especially grand
James Allen's Girls' School (Jags) - academic, not at all grand
Queen Margaret's - in Edinburgh? Just MC I think, quite academic
Woldingham School - middling academic, middling smart
Godolphin - fairly academic, not especially smart
Godolphin & Latymer - isn’t this a boys school?
The Lady Eleanor Holles School - more academic than it was, not especially smart
Malvern St James - more of a local MC school, with some country elements

@TeenPlusCat

It might be to do with where brothers attend but I suspect it's not. We travelled further to attend some schools and therefore didn't go to the closest ones.

I can think of at least 3 constantly used rules based on giving respect to other pupils as well as teachers. We had etiquette lessons. And we were given feedback on our progress which was reported by all the staff in a meeting so our head of year could give us pointers. We also had to earn privileges through our decorum which couldn't be earned any other way (like academically)

The word you're looking for is 'elitist'.

Probably add in NLCS given you’ve got SPGS and City.

As an aside, I believe classiest is the more informal superlative of classy. If one went to these schools surely they would ask, "which is the most classy?" I may be wrong.
Sorry just being pedantic based on the nature of the original question. 😬

St Mary's Ascot is the Eaton of girls schools.

Given the weirdness of the question, I suspect this thread is research for an article- some work has been put into that list. To answer, I’d say the list isn’t bad. I’d put Queen Margaret’s higher up and probably drop LEH. Might swap CLC and St Mary’s Ascot.

I'd love to hear what you have to say on etiquette forming daily life though.

Bear in mind that a lot of “top” schools may have a significant proportion of foreign children from wealthy backgrounds - such as Chinese or Russian or Nigerian - and they won’t necessarily fit into any sort of perceived idea about class hierarchy.

To ignore the 'classy' debate, I went to one of those schools and in terms of the list, I would judge an 'order' if necessary based on who had socials with each boys' school. We had socials with Eton and two other schools.

I think the organisation's choices of social partners said more about their social aspirations than anything else. It certainly doesn't reflect their academic credentials.

I'd also order it based on how much etiquette formed part of daily life attending the school but that is a much harder thing to assess and it would be outing I think to give examples based on the school I attended.