The schools in Amersham are very good, and the system around them is selective. The primaries score well above the usual mark at the end of Year 6. The secondaries post strong exam results. Two of them are grammar schools. A town this keen on its schools makes its children sit an exam at ten to find out which one they go to.
There are 12 mainstream state primaries around Amersham, and their pupils average a scaled maths score of about 108 at the end of primary school. That is a strong result for a whole group of schools. Elangeni School and St Mary's Church of England primary are among them. The rest are a mix of infant, junior and all-through schools spread across Amersham-on-the-Hill, Old Amersham and the villages.
The four mainstream state secondaries in the area average about 70 on Attainment 8, the government's measure of results across eight subjects at sixteen, weighted by pupil numbers. Dr Challoner's Grammar School takes boys and goes back to 1624, when it started in Old Amersham, and its sixth form has taken girls again since 2015. Dr Challoner's High School, the girls' grammar in Little Chalfont, also draws from the town. Amersham School is the non-selective academy, which opened in 1964 as Brudenell, a girls' school, and became co-educational in 1988 when the boys' secondary, Raans, closed. Simon Church, who went on to play for Wales, went to Amersham School, so the non-selective route has produced at least one international.
Ofsted has graded 94 schools and settings across Buckinghamshire, and 80 of them are good or outstanding, roughly five in every six. Nineteen of those are outstanding, 11 require improvement and 3 are inadequate. That is a county-wide count covering every corner of Buckinghamshire, and Amersham's own share of it is much smaller, so look up the grade for any particular school.
Living near a school is not the same as getting a place. Buckinghamshire Council allocates places under its published admissions rules, and for the grammar schools a child also has to pass the selection test. The practical check is to read the council's admissions rules for the specific primary and secondary you are counting on, and their record of how far away the last child admitted lived, all before the house goes under offer. Parents who bought on the strength of the school name on the sign tend to be the ones reading those rules in March, once the offer has come through.
Schooling is one of Amersham's real strengths. The results are strong all the way through, and families who are comfortable with a selective system will do very well here.