Buckingham's schools are good, and the bigger decision a parent faces here is which secondary their child will go to. The county around it has very few weak schools. Several are outstanding. The town has a grammar school, a secondary modern and two private schools close by, so the choice at eleven matters more than any inspection grade.
Ofsted has graded 94 schools across Buckinghamshire, the whole county council area and not just this town, and 80 of them are good or outstanding. That is a little over four in five. Nineteen are outstanding, 11 require improvement and 3 are inadequate. The county also has 94 settings with no published grade yet, which are left out of the count, and none of that says anything about their quality. A parent moving here is choosing from a stronger list than most, and the weak schools are few enough to look up one by one.
Buckinghamshire still runs selective secondary schools. In Buckingham that means the Royal Latin School, the grammar, and the Buckingham School, the secondary modern. The local primaries share out the town between them. Buckingham Primary School is the community school, and Bourton Meadow Academy, George Grenville Academy and Lace Hill Academy are all run by the same academy trust. Places at every one of them are allocated under the council's published admissions rules, so buying the house nearest the gate guarantees nothing. Ask Buckinghamshire Council how places at the Royal Latin are decided for your address, because entry depends on the selection test as well as where you live. The county sorts eleven-year-olds into two buildings in the same town, and parents spend the years before it pretending they haven't noticed.
Stowe School and Akeley Wood Senior School are private schools just outside the town. Stowe sits in the Capability Brown landscape that tourists pay to walk round. The University of Buckingham, the oldest of the country's private universities, is also in the town. Department for Transport modelling from 2019 puts the nearest primary at about a 12-minute walk and the nearest secondary at about 19 minutes. That is short enough that the school run for most families involves no car.
Schools are one of Buckingham's real strengths. The county's grades are high, and the primaries and secondaries are all in walking distance, so the main thing a family has to plan around is the selection test.