Buckhurst Hill's schools are good, and the only awkward moment comes at eleven. The town has two state primaries of its own and both are within reach of most front doors. Primary maths results in the area are strong. There is no state secondary in the parish, so every teenager starts commuting to Loughton. Parents get a short walk for seven years and then a bus pass.
The two state primaries in the parish are Buckhurst Hill Community Primary School and St John's Church of England Voluntary Controlled Primary School, Buckhurst Hill, and St John's goes back to 1838, when it was built next to the new church on land donated by the lord of the manor. Across the 5 state primaries in the area, the average end-of-primary maths score is 107. Essex County Council allocates places under its published admissions rules, so buying a house within sight of either gate gets a family an application and nothing more, and the council's allocation figures from recent years are worth reading for both schools before choosing a street. The Daiglen School, a small independent preparatory school on Palmerston Road, is the fee-paying alternative inside the town. St John's has been teaching the town's children for longer than the town has had a railway.
Secondary is where Buckhurst Hill hands its children to a neighbour. Roding Valley High School in Loughton takes the area, and it was formed in 1989 when three schools merged, the town's own boys' county high school among them. The one mainstream state secondary counted in the area averages 56 on Attainment 8, the measure of results across a pupil's best eight subjects. Buckhurst Hill once had a secondary of its own, and then it went to Loughton with the others and never came back.
Ofsted has graded 246 settings across Essex, and 218 of them are good or outstanding, close to nine in ten, so this is a county-wide figure covering everything from Harwich to the London border. Of those graded, 22 are outstanding, 23 require improvement and 5 are inadequate. That county average is diluted by a great many schools a Buckhurst Hill child will never set foot in.
Schools are one of Buckhurst Hill's real strengths, and the only thing missing is a secondary inside the town itself.