Schools are one of the better things about Brixton Hill, and the primaries carry most of the case. The primaries score well in maths at age eleven. The two state secondaries in the area post a softer result. In Lambeth, good or outstanding schools far outnumber the weak ones. A neighbourhood that rents as freely as this one has a better school list than its turnover would lead you to expect.
There are nine mainstream state primaries around here, and their pupils average a maths score of about 107 at the end of Key Stage 2, the national tests taken in the last year of primary school. Sudbourne Primary School, Corpus Christi Catholic Primary School and Richard Atkins Primary School are among the names nearby. Nine primaries is a lot of reception classes for a hill where three in four homes are flats.
At secondary level the picture is thinner, and smaller. The area has two mainstream state secondaries, and their pupils average an Attainment 8 score of about 40, the government's measure of GCSE results across eight subjects. Trinity Academy is among the secondaries in the area, and South Bank University Sixth Form takes students after sixteen. With only two schools in the average, a single year group can move it.
Lambeth as a whole has 41 schools with a published Ofsted grade, and 35 of them are good or outstanding. Eleven are outstanding, five require improvement and one is inadequate. Another 32 settings across the borough have not yet been given a published grade, and that tells you nothing either way about their quality. Ofsted handed out more outstanding grades in Lambeth than it handed out bad ones combined.
Getting into a school is a separate question from its grade. Lambeth Council allocates places under its published admissions rules, so living near Sudbourne or any other school does not secure a place there. Distance is one criterion, and faith schools such as Corpus Christi set their own. Lambeth publishes how far from each school the last place went in recent years. That distance is the one to check against the house before anyone starts measuring for curtains, because it changes with every intake and nobody on the hill controls it.
The schools are a real strength of Brixton Hill, with primaries that would hold up well in far more expensive postcodes. Families who stay past eleven should look more closely at the two secondaries than the primaries' results might tempt them to.