Ages: 13-18

Registration: Three years before entry

Admissions: Independent Schools Education Board (ISEB) tests or school’s own exam; Common Entrance exam plus interview. There are 550 applicants for 120 places at 13+

No. of Pupils: 740

Curriculum: (I)GCSE, Pre-U, A-levels

Noteworthy: One of the top-ranked co-educational schools in the UK, Westminster has the highest Oxbridge acceptance rates of any secondary school or college in the world. Last year, a phenomenal 86 per cent got A*-A grades at A-levels. This day and boarding school is located within the awe-inspiring precincts of Westminster Abbey and is the only ancient London school to occupy its original site.

The school’s alumni reads like a who’s who list of literary luminaries including Ben Jonson, John Dryden, Christopher Wren, John Locke, AA Milne, Peter Ustinov and Tony Benn, as well as seven British prime ministers to date.

New: Westminster won the 2015 Space Design Competition and represented the UK at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida; it also beat 600 other schools to win the 2016 Cambridge Schools Debating Competition.

Term fees: Day: £8,416; boarding: £12,154

Little Dean’s Yard, Great Smith Street, Westminster, London, westminster.org.uk