Abingdon-on-Thames has strong schools, and plenty of them. Across the county, about nine in ten schools with a grade are rated good or better. The town has three state secondaries of its own. The fee-paying schools start at prep-school age and go all the way up to Radley College. The hard part is getting a place, not finding a good school.
Ofsted has rated 108 of Oxfordshire's 121 graded schools good or better, which is close to nine in ten. Eleven of those are outstanding. At the other end, ten require improvement and three are inadequate. Another 151 settings in the county have no published grade yet. That says nothing about their quality; they simply haven't been graded. These are county figures, and they mix village primaries near Abingdon with schools on the far side of Oxfordshire.
Places go by Oxfordshire County Council's published admissions rules, so a house near a school doesn't guarantee a child a place there, and the council doesn't promise that a house on a particular street will get one. Each year the council publishes how far away the last child offered a place lived. Last year's figure for the schools you're interested in is the most useful number you can look up when choosing a street.
Among the primaries, St Nicolas Church of England Primary School carries the town's name, along with a list of community and church schools spread around the town and its villages. For secondary school, families here usually choose between John Mason School and Fitzharrys School in the town, with Larkmead School as the third local option. South of town at Culham, Europa School UK gives the area an option most market towns don't have. Abingdon has had schooling since the abbey, where William the Conqueror's son may have had lessons, so getting into a good school here has been a concern for a long time.
The fee-paying schools are what make the local picture unusual. Abingdon School, St Helen and St Katharine, The Manor Preparatory School and Cothill House are all in the area, and Radley College is close by. That gives the town a second, much more expensive school-gate conversation running alongside the state one. When a listing says "walking distance to Abingdon School", it describes the morning walk and leaves out the fees.
For a family thinking about Abingdon, schools are one of the town's real strengths. Most of the work goes into reading the council's admissions rules, not into finding a good school.