They are the best-behaved thing about Bath. Almost every graded setting in the local authority comes out good or better. Four are outstanding. Primary maths results sit above the national mark and the walk to the school gates is short. In a city that fights you over paint colours and parking bays, the schools are the one system that simply works.
Across the area there are 26 mainstream state primaries, and their key stage 2 maths results average around 104, which sits above the national average score of 100. That is a broad, steady picture rather than a couple of star performers dragging up a weak field. Weston All Saints, Widcombe Infant and Junior, Newbridge, Combe Down, St Andrew's and the rest cover the city in a fairly even grid, and the outlying villages have their own: Bathford Church School, Freshford Church School, Swainswick Church School, Batheaston Church School, Norton St Philip Church of England First School and Farmborough Church Primary all serve the parishes beyond the valley. The Department for Transport's modelled journey times put a primary around 9 minutes' walk away on average. In a city built on hills, that number is doing more work than it looks.
Secondary is a smaller field. Six mainstream state secondaries serve the area, with a pupil-weighted Attainment 8 score of around 52. Beechen Cliff, Hayesfield Girls School, Oldfield School, Ralph Allen School, Saint Gregory's Catholic College and St Mark's are the state options, and the modelled walk to a secondary runs around 20 minutes. Bath also carries an unusually heavy independent sector for a city its size, with King Edward's School, Kingswood School, Prior Park College, Monkton Combe School and the Royal High School all within reach, which is a fact about the city's history as much as its education market.
Ofsted has published overall effectiveness grades for 41 settings across Bath and North East Somerset, and 39 of them are good or better. That is almost all of them. Four hold outstanding, one requires improvement, and one is inadequate. Those counts cover the whole local authority rather than the city alone, so they include village schools well outside Bath. A further 28 settings hold no published grade at all, which means they have not yet been inspected under the current arrangements, not that anything is wrong with them.
The usual caution applies harder here than most places. Bath's geography is vertical and its admissions are not sentimental about it. Living within sight of a school gate is not the same as having a place at it, oversubscribed schools allocate on published criteria rather than on how much you paid for the house, and the criteria can change between the year you buy and the year you apply. Anyone buying with a specific school in mind should check that school's current admissions arrangements and last few years of allocations before the offer, not after.
The schools are the strongest thing this area has going for it, and unusually for Bath, they do not come with a heritage consent form attached.