One outstanding school in the city, and the parents already know which one it is. Twenty rated good. Four rated requires improvement. Fifty-two graded in total across Brighton. The good ones are geographically clustered, and the parents on those streets can afford to be smug.
At primary, there are around 30 mainstream state primaries in the area, and the Key Stage 2 maths score sits at about 103.5, a shade above the national baseline and honest about being nothing more. Balfour Primary School, Downs Junior School and Stanford Infant School do the numbers in the north. St Luke's Primary School, Queen's Park Primary School and Elm Grove Primary School do them in the centre. Saltdean Primary School and St Margaret's CofE Primary School sit at the coastal edges. There are Church of England primaries, Catholic primaries and community primaries scattered across the wards, and the differences between them are less about ethos than about who gets in first when the reception forms open in January.
At secondary, there are 5 mainstream state secondaries in the area, and the Key Stage 4 Attainment 8 score sits at about 45.9, which is a fraction under the England average and reads as competent rather than exceptional. Dorothy Stringer School and Varndean School do the heavy lifting for the northern half of Brighton. Longhill High School serves the eastern seafront and the Rottingdean end. Patcham High School sits on the northern edge above the bypass. Brighton Aldridge Community Academy and Portslade Aldridge Community Academy round out the state option. Varndean College is the post-sixteen destination for anyone treating A-levels as a college choice rather than a school extension.
The independent option is Brighton College, Brighton Girls GDST, Roedean School and the various preparatory feeders that go with them. These are the schools that appear in league-table journalism, and their existence is one reason the state-school picture reads as merely average in a city where more than four in ten adults hold a degree.
The catchment caveat is the important one. A school on your walk to work is not a school your child will get into. Brighton and Hove allocates on distance, sibling status and a small number of overlapping lotteries for the more oversubscribed schools, and the property market has priced this in so completely that streets four hundred metres apart carry different sale premiums for the same house. Buy the house, apply on time, and hope the sibling rule falls your way. That is the mechanism, and pretending otherwise is what estate agents do for a living.
The schools here are honestly average, and the outliers are the reason parents move. If a child needs the outstanding school, the postcode is the postcode, and it is not the affordable one. If a child needs a school that does the job without theatre, most of them do, and any of them within walking distance will do.