Chesham's schools are strong, and there is an exam at eleven attached. There are seven state primaries around the town. Two secondaries sit side by side, one selective and one not. Most schools across the county are rated good or better. The eleven-plus decides which secondary a child gets, and most parents in the town spend a year thinking about little else.
There are seven mainstream state primaries in the area, and their pupils averaged about 105 in Key Stage 2 maths. Several still carry the names of the first-and-middle system Buckinghamshire gave up in 1996. Elmtree Infant and Nursery School, Brushwood Junior School and Waterside Primary Academy show the split and the newer all-through model next to each other. Plenty of Chesham families pick a village primary up the hill instead, such as Ley Hill School or Chartridge Combined School. The Department for Transport's 2019 modelling puts the nearest primary about a ten-minute walk from the average home. In Chesham a child can change schools halfway through primary without the family ever moving house.
There are two mainstream state secondaries in the area, and their pupils averaged an Attainment 8 score of about 58. Chesham Grammar School takes pupils who pass the eleven-plus. Chiltern Hills Academy is the Church of England academy formed when two older schools merged. The grammar school only took its present name in 2010. The new name settled any doubt about what kind of school it was. Chesham children also fall within the catchment areas of two Dr Challoner's grammar schools in Amersham and Little Chalfont. The same 2019 modelling puts the average secondary walk at about 26 minutes, compared with about ten for primary. Walk the route to Chiltern Hills Academy before you commit, because the valley sides mean that 26 minutes is uphill for somebody.
Ofsted has graded 94 settings across the Buckinghamshire Council area, and 80 of them are good or better, which is most of them. Nineteen are rated outstanding, 11 require improvement and 3 are inadequate. Settings that have never had a published grade are left out of those counts. Buckinghamshire Council gives out places under its own published admissions rules, and the eleven-plus sits on top of those at secondary level. Living two streets from a school therefore does not get your child a place. The county-wide count describes all of Buckinghamshire, and the town's schools make up only a small part of it.
Chesham also has Heritage House School, a special school for pupils aged two to nineteen with severe learning difficulties, and Chesham Preparatory School on the edge of town at Orchard Leigh. Families who would rather skip the eleven-plus altogether usually end up looking at the prep school.
Schools are among Chesham's real strengths. The primaries do well, and the grammar school is in the town itself. Families just have to accept that the eleven-plus will decide the secondary.