The schools in Arundel are the kind you have to describe without a scorecard. No Ofsted grades sit inside this brief's rated pool for the town, so anyone telling you the local primary is Outstanding or Good is telling you something they remember rather than something the data confirms. What the brief does carry is the map of what's on offer, which is a small clutch of Church of England primaries, one Catholic primary, an independent college in the neighbouring parish, and a specialist school for children whose needs the mainstream sector cannot meet. That is the picture. It is neither dazzling nor grim.
At primary age, the Church of England option in the town itself is Arundel Church of England Primary School, which sits inside the market town and serves the families who bought within walking distance of it. The Catholic primary next door is Saint Philip's Catholic Primary School, which draws from a wider Catholic community across the Arun parishes. The surrounding villages carry their own small primaries: Amberley Church of England Primary School to the north, Walberton and Binsted Church of England Primary School out toward the A27, Yapton Church of England Primary School on the flatter ground east of Barnham, and Slindon Church of England Primary School tucked into the woodland north-west of the town. These are village primaries, small, denominational, and mostly the kind of place where the head knows the parents by first name.
Beyond mainstream primary, the town's independent option in the local area is Slindon College, sitting a few miles north-west. The Amicus School serves specialist provision in the wider area, and My Choice School Arundel does the same. Neither is a mainstream secondary and neither substitutes for one. For state secondary the town does not have its own inside this brief, which means the buyers doing the sums are looking at what sits down the coast or over toward Chichester, and dealing with a bus or a car journey either way. That is a real constraint for a family with a twelve-year-old and no driver at home.
The catchment caveat is the caveat every buyer needs before writing anything into an offer. A school being nearby is not the same as a school having a place for your child. Admissions here run on distance-based tie-breakers, faith criteria at the church schools, and sibling rules that mean the child arriving second walks into a decision the child arriving first already made. Parents moving here specifically for a particular primary need to speak to the school's admissions office before they commit to a house, because the address that got the neighbour's child in last September may not get yours in this September. The village primaries are small, which means the algorithm sorts them quickly and the letter arrives with the decision already made.
The specialist provision at The Amicus School and at My Choice School Arundel is the answer to a very specific question, not to the general one. Families whose children have education, health and care plans, or complex needs the mainstream sector cannot support, are the ones looking at those two names. Everybody else is looking at the Church of England primaries, the Catholic primary, and the fact that a secondary school still means a journey.
The verdict on the schools comes out at 3 out of 5, which is the default position when the brief does not carry graded Ofsted counts for the local pool. That is not the schools failing; it is the data not telling you they succeed. If the schools matter to your decision here, ring the ones you care about, ask about last year's admissions distance, and go and see them before you agree to a price on a house.