Cheam's schools are its strongest card, and parents know it. The primaries get good maths results. The secondaries do better still. Across the borough, almost every school Ofsted has graded comes out good or better. Getting into the right one is harder than the house price.
There are five state primary schools in the area, and their pupils averaged 109 in the end-of-primary maths tests. Two of them carry the place's name, Cheam Fields Primary Academy and Cheam Park Farm Primary Academy, and St Cecilia's Catholic Primary School is also nearby. Brookfield Primary Academy completes the local list of primaries. Nearly half of Cheam's homes have three bedrooms, and they were built for families with children of exactly this age. The suburb has been organised around the school run for about ninety years.
The three state secondary schools in the area have a combined Attainment 8 score of about 63, weighted by pupil numbers. Attainment 8 is the government's measure across a pupil's best eight subjects at sixteen. Nonsuch High School for Girls takes its name from the park and is the one most families mention first. Cheam High School is the other school carrying the local name, and Glenthorne High School is nearby too. The secondary results here are strong enough that they come up in conversations about house prices.
In the borough of Sutton, Ofsted has graded 27 of 28 settings good or better, so all but one. Nine of them are outstanding, one requires improvement and none is inadequate. Another 25 settings in the borough have no published grade yet, which tells you nothing either way about their quality. Since those figures cover the whole borough, they describe the standard you can expect around Cheam rather than grading any particular school.
Places are given out under the council's published admissions rules, so living near Nonsuch High School for Girls or Cheam Fields does not guarantee your child a place, and faith schools such as St Cecilia's add their own criteria. Sutton Council publishes how far from each school the last place offered went in previous years, and that is the number to look up while the house is still only a viewing. The families who skip it tend to find out in March, when the offer letters arrive and a school two streets away turns them down.
Schools are where Cheam is at its best, and on these results they are among the strongest in this part of London. The price of a house here is partly the price of a school place, and people pay it.