The schools are one of the best reasons to live in Barnehurst. Five in six graded schools across the borough are good or better. The local primaries post maths results above the expected standard. A primary is a short walk from most front doors. The weak spot is choice at secondary, which is a bus ride rather than a stroll.
Eight state primaries serve the area, and their pupils averaged a score of 106 in the Key Stage 2 maths tests taken at the end of primary school. Fairford Academy Barnehurst is the one carrying the town's name. Mayplace Primary School, Upland Primary School and Bursted Wood Primary School make up the rest of the familiar local shortlist, alongside the other primaries around here. The Department for Transport's modelled journey times, from 2019, put the nearest primary about eight minutes' walk away on average. The nearest secondary is about 17 minutes on foot or 15 by public transport. A town laid out in the 1920s for families with children still behaves like one when the bell goes at quarter to nine.
Across the London Borough of Bexley, Ofsted has graded 30 of 36 schools good or better, which is five in every six. Five are outstanding, five require improvement and one is inadequate. A further 39 settings in the borough have no published grade yet and sit outside those counts. Endeavour Academy Bexley is among the other settings the borough lists for the area. The borough-wide figure is strong, and in Barnehurst it is reassuring rather than decisive, because a family here chooses from a handful of nearby schools and the other thirty-odd hardly matter.
Places are handed out by Bexley Council under its published admissions rules, so buying the semi nearest Fairford Academy Barnehurst does not put a child through its gates, whatever the parents assume from the map. Look up the school's admissions rules on the council's website and how far away the last child admitted lived. Parents who skip that check usually do their reading in the spring their child is offered somewhere else.
Barnehurst's schools are one of its real strengths: good primaries close by, a borough that gets most of its grading right, and only a secondary-school bus journey to grumble about.