Buntingford's schools are good, and the county around them is better still. The town runs a three-tier system: first school, middle school, then upper school. Nine in ten Hertfordshire schools with a grade are rated good or outstanding. The secondary results are solid, and the old grammar school's founder still has her name on the upper school. Parents from a two-tier county need a week to work out the system and rarely complain after that.
At primary level the system works differently here. Children leave first school for middle school in Year Five, so Year Six is taught at the middle school. One state school in the area has published Key Stage 2 results, and its pupils average a maths score of 102. The first schools in town are Buntingford First School, Layston Church of England First School and Millfield First and Nursery School. Each surrounding village has its own small first or primary school, including Hormead Church of England First School. The extra school change means "which secondary?" gets asked twice here, once for middle school and once for upper school.
Freman College is the upper school. Pupils join in Year Nine and can stay on through sixth form. The area's one mainstream state secondary averages an Attainment 8 score of about 53. The college has been an academy since 2011, one of the first schools to convert. It takes its name from Elizabeth Freman, who paid for the town's first secondary school between 1630 and 1633, and Bishop Seth Ward, who endowed that school again in 1684. The building that grammar school was replaced by has had its name changed several times, but the Freman name has outlasted all of them.
Of the 227 Hertfordshire schools and settings with a published grade, Ofsted has rated 203 good or better, which is about nine in ten. That is a county-wide figure, and it includes 40 rated outstanding, 21 rated requires improvement and three rated inadequate. Settings Ofsted has not yet graded are left out of the count. With only one primary-phase result and one secondary result in the area itself, the county figure gives the bigger picture, and the town's own numbers come from a very small sample.
Hertfordshire County Council allocates places using its published admissions rules, so buying a house near Millfield or Layston does not secure a place at either. The church first schools can also weigh faith criteria under their own policies. Ask the council for last year's allocation records for the first school you want, because in a town this size one popular reception class can fill up a long way short of the edge of town. Royston is the only other Hertfordshire town that uses the three-tier system, so families moving between the two are among the few who arrive already knowing how it works.
Schools are one of Buntingford's real strengths: the county around it is consistently good, there is a clear path from first school to sixth form, and the main thing that can go wrong is applying too late.