Good, and the youngest children barely need shoes for the trip. Nearly nine in ten graded schools across the county are good or better. The infant and junior schools carry the town's own name. Secondary means a longer haul. The school run here starts as a stroll and ends as a lift.
The Ofsted figures cover the whole of Hampshire, not Ashley alone, so read them as the county's report card rather than the street's. Ofsted has graded 211 schools there, and 185 of them are good or better, close to nine in every ten. Of those, 27 are outstanding. At the other end, 16 require improvement and 10 are inadequate, which is a small tail but a real one, and worth checking against any shortlist before the removal van is booked. Another 226 settings hold no published grade yet; they are not poor, they are ungraded, and they sit outside those counts.
For the younger ones, Ashley Infant School and Ashley Junior School carry the place's name, and New Milton Infant School and New Milton Junior School sit alongside them in the wider New Milton patch. The Department for Transport's modelled journey times, from 2019, put the nearest primary about 11 minutes' walk from the average home, or about 8 minutes by car. That is close enough that driving to it looks less like convenience and more like a lifestyle statement.
Secondary is a different trip. The Arnewood School and Priestlands School are the two secondaries in the local picture. The same modelled times put the nearest secondary about 37 minutes' walk away, about 26 minutes by public transport and about 11 by car. Teenagers who wanted independence will find it on a bus, and parents who promised themselves they'd never become a taxi service will find out how long that promise lasts.
None of the schools named here comes with a guaranteed place. Admission runs on the council's own rules, and a house near a school gate is a bet on those rules, not a ticket. Buyers who pick a street for a school's name alone sometimes learn this from the offer letter, which is the most expensive way to read an admissions policy. Check the current criteria and the last few years of allocations with Hampshire before the survey, not after completion.
Schools are one of Ashley's real strengths: a county where good is the norm, primaries within walking distance, and a secondary run that asks for a bus pass rather than a sacrifice.