Catford's schools are strong, and the primaries are the main reason. The local state primaries score above the expected standard in maths. Nearly every school Lewisham has had graded came out good or better. The nearest primary is a short walk from most homes. The secondaries are the part to look at more carefully, because there are only two of them in the area and their results are well below what the primaries manage.
There are 10 mainstream state primaries around here, and their average maths score at the end of primary school is about 104, just above the expected standard of 100. Rushey Green Primary School carries the name of the ward at the middle of Catford, and Athelney, Torridon and Holy Cross Catholic Primary School are among the others. On the Department for Transport's modelled times from 2019, the nearest primary is about six minutes' walk from the average home. The school run here is the one part of the morning that doesn't need a train.
There are two mainstream state secondaries in the area, Conisborough College and Sedgehill Academy, and together their pupils average an Attainment 8 score of about 40. That's well short of the primary results. With only two schools, a weaker year or a single inspection changes the whole local secondary picture. The modelled walk to the nearest secondary was about 16 minutes in 2019. St Dunstan's College is the independent option, and Greenvale School is another local school. Families who stretched for a three-bedroom terrace on the strength of the primaries will be thinking hard about Year 7 before long.
Across Lewisham as a whole, Ofsted has given a published grade to 35 schools, and 34 of them are good or better, which is almost all of them. Four are outstanding, one requires improvement and none is inadequate. Another 41 Lewisham settings have no published overall grade yet. Those are uninspected or ungraded, which tells you nothing either way about how good they are.
Places are given out by Lewisham Council under its published admissions rules, and living near Rushey Green or Conisborough does not secure a place at either. Get the council's allocation distances for the last few years at the schools you care about, then check them against the house you're looking at. Over-subscription plays out differently at each school, so a road that won a place at one primary last year tells you little about the next primary along.
Primary schooling is one of Catford's real strengths. The good grades cover almost the whole borough, and the local primaries score above the expected standard in maths. Secondary is where the planning starts.