Tatler Schools Guide 2025

We are delighted to once again be featured in the Tatler Schools Guide 2025, a carefully chosen selection of the UK’s leading independent schools. The guide is put together based on a programme of school visits incorporating conversations with heads, pupils and teachers, and a comprehensive annual survey.

“In 1890 a liberal group, supported by the editor of the Manchester Guardian, founded WGS with the admirable aspiration to inspire and empower young women, and to equip them for the future. They’d surely be proud of their legacy.

The children here place great store on engaging with and giving back to their wider community, and last year spent approximately 17,730 hours on outreach activities. (These have included welcoming pupils from local state schools to their Futures Convention, which show­cased the opportunities available to youngsters and was attended by spokespeople from such global busi­nesses as Barclays and Bentley.) Meanwhile, Citizenship Day, held every June, sees teams of girls engaged in neighbourhood projects that range from mural-painting and gardening to litter-picking.

Proud of its physical prowess, the school has recently appointed the former Lionesses defender Lindsay Johnson as director of sport; but netball and hockey are also popular, and the prospect of an upcoming lacrosse tour of the US sounds like a great way to persuade the squad to aim high.

Off the pitch, the academic results are brilliant – 95 per cent of A-levels are A*-B – and the per­forming arts flourish, with major productions involving the whole school. Budding musicians can play at such events as Manchester Sings, which sees hundreds of Mancunian children give voice at the cathedral – as well as at Withington’s annual Christmas tea party for senior citizens – and if their tastes are a bit niche, the school has an impressive collection of harps to choose from.”