Anerley's schools are strong, and the area shares in some of the best-graded schools in south-east London. Nearly every graded school nearby is rated good or better. More than a third are outstanding. Not one is rated inadequate. The primaries are a short walk, and the secondaries are a bus ride or a longer walk.
Across the London Borough of Bromley, Ofsted has rated 40 of the 41 graded schools good or outstanding, which leaves just one below that line. Fifteen are outstanding, one requires improvement and none is inadequate. Another 48 settings in the borough have no published grade yet, which tells you nothing either way about them. Because these are borough-wide counts, Anerley gets a share of a strong record and does not own it outright.
The primaries are close. Harris Primary Academy Kent House, Harris Primary Academy Crystal Palace, Stewart Fleming Primary School and St John's Church of England Primary School are all within easy reach, along with James Dixon Primary School and St Anthony's Catholic Primary School. Places at all of them are allocated under Bromley's published admissions rules, and the faith schools set their own criteria, so a house round the corner from a gate gets you the walk and nothing more. On the Department for Transport's modelled 2019 times, the nearest primary is about seven minutes away on foot. Bromley publishes how far from each school last year's final offers reached, and that one page is worth reading against any particular house. None of the local primaries carries Anerley's name, and two of them are named after Crystal Palace and Kent House.
Secondary school takes longer to reach. The same 2019 figures put the nearest secondary about 17 minutes' walk away, or about 15 minutes by public transport, and no local secondary appears among the area's named schools. Woodside Park School is nearby as an independent option. For most families the choice at eleven means a journey and a ranked list on Bromley's application form. Parents who only start reading secondary admission rules in Year 6 usually find out the order they ranked their choices in mattered more than they realised.
Schools are one of Anerley's real strengths, borrowed from a borough that rarely lets a school slip. The primaries are on the doorstep, and the secondaries are one bus ride further.