The schools around Aldenham are strong, and Ofsted's grades for the county back that up. About nine in ten of the graded schools are good or better, and outstanding ones are common enough not to be unusual. None of the schools on the area's list carries the village's name, so a child's school day here starts with a drive. Families get good schools as long as they don't need them close by.
Ofsted has graded 227 schools and other settings across Hertfordshire. Of those, 203 are rated good or better, close to nine in ten, including 40 rated outstanding. Twenty-one require improvement and three are inadequate. Another 226 settings across the county have no published grade yet, which tells you nothing about how good they are. With that many good grades, Hertfordshire parents don't treat good as anything special and start comparing schools only at outstanding.
Getting to school is the catch for a village of this size. On the Department for Transport's 2019 modelling, the nearest primary is about 23 minutes' walk from the average Aldenham home, or about nine minutes by car. The nearest secondary is about 35 minutes on foot and 11 by car. By public transport the primary is about 19 minutes and the secondary 26, and bus timetables can change a good deal in seven years. Most of these school runs will be done by car, and on narrow lanes with conservation-area verges.
The schools on the area's list are spread around the edges of the parish. Parmiter's School, Future Academies Watford and Saint Michael's Catholic High School are the secondaries. Coates Way JMI and Nursery School and Leavesden JMI School are among the primaries, and Edge Grove School appears on the wider list too. Hertfordshire County Council allocates places under its published admissions rules, and living near a school, or in a village that costs this much, does not on its own get a child a place. A family's address decides which schools are worth applying to, and the council decides who gets a place. The council publishes how far away the last pupil admitted to each oversubscribed school lived in recent years, and that is worth reading for any school you plan around. Two schools near the village have closed, so older recommendations may name schools that no longer exist.
Schools are one of Aldenham's real strengths. Nearly every option is good or better, but almost none of them is within walking distance.