Wycombe Abbey School

About the school

Wycombe Abbey is an independent girls’ school situated in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, England. It is academically one of the top schools in the United Kingdom, and the top girls’ boarding school (in terms of academic results). The school was founded in 1896 by Dame Frances Dove who was previously headmistress of St Leonards School in Scotland. Its present capacity is approximately 540 girls aged 11 to 18.

The school is situated in 160 acres of ground in central High Wycombe. The land includes woods, gardens and a lake, and rises up to 500 feet above sea level in the Chiltern Hills.

At Wycombe Abbey learning and living together are fundamental to our community life.

We believe that the strong sense of community, created through our vibrant full boarding ethos, enables us to provide an exceptionally rich and exciting education in its broadest sense, for the benefit of each girl in our care. Day girls are called ‘Day Boarders’ – to reinforce everyone’s commitment to the boarding ethos.

We have a small number of day girls (approximately 30 throughout the school in any given year). Day girls are known as day boarders to emphasise the fact that they are part of the wider boarding community and take part in most of its activities.

All day boarders are part of a House and play a full part in House activities. They occasionally sleep over in House by arrangement with the Housemistress.

We are frequently asked “Why does Wycombe Abbey appear in first place in some newspaper league tables and further down the ranking in others?”

League tables are produced by mainstream media outlets to compare and contrast the A level and GCSE results of schools across the country. Each media outlet devises its own criteria for ranking schools, and as a result of this, Wycombe Abbey’s position within tables can vary considerably.