The schools around Botany Bay are the strongest thing about living there. Every school Ofsted has graded in the borough is rated good or better. There are eight state primaries in the area and three state secondaries. None of the borough's graded schools sits in the bottom two grades. A family can move here for the fields and end up with good schools without having planned for them.
Primary results are solid. The eight mainstream state primaries in the area average a Key Stage 2 maths score of about 107. They include Forty Hill CofE Primary School, close to Forty Hall, and Chase Side Primary School nearer Enfield Town, with Merryhills Primary School and One Degree Academy among the rest. The area has a mix of church, academy and community primaries, so families have a real choice of type as well as location.
At secondary level, the three mainstream state secondaries in the area produce a pupil-weighted Attainment 8 score of about 53. They are Enfield Grammar School, Enfield County School for Girls and Wren Academy Enfield. The first two have been in Enfield long enough that parents often recognise the names before they have looked at a single result. The name tells you how old a school is, but the Attainment 8 figure is the one that tells you how it is doing now.
Enfield's Ofsted record is unusually clean. Of the 42 schools across the London Borough of Enfield holding a published grade, all 42 are good or better, two of them outstanding, with none rated requires improvement and none inadequate. Another 37 settings in the borough have no published grade yet, so they are left out of that count without any suggestion that they are weaker. Choosing between Enfield schools means deciding which of the good ones you want.
That choice is narrower than it looks. Enfield Council allocates places under its published admissions rules, and owning a house on The Ridgeway or in Gordon Hill does not secure a place at the school down the road. For any school you are counting on, ask the council's admissions team how far away the last child offered a place lived in recent years, and compare that with the house you are looking at. A large garden in Clay Hill is easier to find than a short walk to the school you want.
Botany Bay's schools are some of the best things about it, and the main thing a family has to work out is which good school they can get into from which house.