Charfield's schools are very good, and the primary is close enough to walk to. Nearly nine in ten graded schools across the wider council area are rated good or better. The village primary is a short walk from most homes. Secondary means a bus or a lift. The hard part comes at eleven, when the walk turns into a school run.
South Gloucestershire has 56 schools with a published Ofsted grade, and 50 of them are rated good or outstanding, close to nine in every ten. Five are outstanding, five require improvement and one is inadequate. Another 47 settings across the authority have no published grade yet. That makes them unknowns, which is a different thing from poor. The odds are good, but a family only ever gets one school, and averages do not change which one.
Charfield Primary School carries the village's name, and the Department for Transport's 2019 modelling puts the nearest primary about eight minutes' walk from the average home. Tortworth Primary School and St Andrew's Church of England Primary School, Cromhall, also appear on the local list. St Andrew's, as a church school, may set admissions criteria of its own. South Gloucestershire Council allocates places under its published admissions rules, so buying the house nearest a school does not secure a place there, and the rules are what decide the matter in the end. One check is worth doing: look up the council's most recent allocation figures for Charfield Primary School and see how far out the last offer went. Parents who skip that step tend to discover the rules on offer day.
Katharine Lady Berkeley's School is the secondary on Charfield's local list. The same 2019 modelling puts the nearest secondary about 11 minutes away by car, 19 by public transport and 44 on foot. That is a long walk for a twelve-year-old with a rucksack, so most families end up driving. Bus timetables have changed since those figures were modelled, so the public transport time is the one most likely to be out of date. The school run is what the village asks of parents in return for an easy primary walk.
On the schools, Charfield is a strong choice. The primary is on the doorstep, the council area's grades run high, and the only real catch is that the drive to secondary school belongs to the parents.