The schools are Chessington's strongest argument. Every graded school in the borough is good or better. Primaries are a short walk from most front doors. There is one secondary in town, and it carries the town's name. The theme park gets the day-trippers, and the school reports get the families who stay.
There are five state primaries in the area, and in the latest key stage 2 results their pupils averaged a maths score of 105. Lovelace Primary and Ellingham Primary are the two Chessington's own Wikipedia page names, and Castle Hill Primary, St Mary's and St Paul's fill out the list. The Department for Transport's 2019 modelling put the nearest primary about nine minutes' walk from the typical home, though walking distance decides nothing on its own: Kingston upon Thames allocates places under its published admissions rules, so living near a school does not secure a place. Look up how far from the gate the last place went in recent years before choosing a street on the strength of a school sign. For a town of interwar family houses, the school run is mostly a walk, and there are few places in outer London where that is still true.
There is one state secondary in the area, Chessington School, a mixed school, and its pupils posted an Attainment 8 score of about 43. With only one school, that number is just Chessington School's own results, and each year group that sits its exams sets the town's figure. Families wanting single-sex schools look north, over the border into Surbiton and Tolworth, about fourteen minutes' walk to the nearest secondary on the same 2019 modelling. That makes the choice of secondary a short commute rather than a house move.
Ofsted's grades for Kingston upon Thames cover the whole borough. Of its 22 graded settings, all 22 are good or better: 8 outstanding, 14 good, and none rated requires improvement or inadequate. Another 24 settings have no published grade yet, which tells a parent nothing either way. A clean record across a whole borough is rare enough that the inspection reports are about the only thing in Chessington nobody complains about.
St Philip's School also appears on the local list, outside the mainstream primary and secondary count. Visit it if a child needs something the mainstream schools are not set up to provide.
The schools are the best thing about Chessington, and Kingston's clean inspection record is the main reason a family would pick this end of the borough over its neighbours.