Chigwell's schools are good, and a parent moving here for them has picked one of the town's safer bets. The local primaries score comfortably above the expected standard in maths. Across the county, nearly nine in ten graded schools are rated good or better. On top of that sits a private school founded by an Archbishop of York. Getting a place is the easy part. Paying for the house that comes before it is the hard part.
There are five mainstream state primaries in the area, and their pupils average about 105 on the end-of-primary maths tests. That is comfortably above the score the tests treat as the expected standard. Chigwell Primary Academy carries the town's name. Limes Farm Infant School and Nursery and Limes Farm Junior School serve the Grange Hill end of the parish, and Chigwell Row Infant School serves the hamlet to the east. They are sound primaries spread across a parish that is more spread out than people expect, and the walk from one end to the other is longer than most four-year-olds would put up with.
The area has one mainstream state secondary, West Hatch High School, and its pupils score an average of about 50 on the Attainment 8 measure. That is a single school's result, so it tells you about West Hatch and nothing about a wider secondary market here, because there isn't one. Nearby secondaries such as Woodford County High School and Trinity Catholic High School are within reach for families on the Woodford side.
Chigwell School is the private option. It was founded in 1629 from a bequest by Samuel Harsnett, Archbishop of York, and its original 17th-century schoolroom still stands and is now the school library. The oldest room on the site is the one where pupils now come to be quiet.
Essex is the authority Ofsted grades these schools under, and across the county 218 of the 246 schools with a published grade are rated good or better. That is close to nine in ten. Of the rest, 22 are outstanding, 23 require improvement and 5 are inadequate. These are county-wide counts, so they describe Essex's schools as a whole. They do not tell you how any single Chigwell school is doing. Only Ofsted's own report for that school can do that, and it is worth reading the latest one in full, because the headline grade leaves a lot out.
Places at state schools are given out under Essex County Council's published admissions rules, and living close to a named school does not guarantee a place there. Look up the council's admissions criteria for the school you have in mind, along with how far away last year's furthest admitted pupil lived. That figure answers the question better than any sales particulars will. Chigwell is close to the boundary with Redbridge, and families who assume a London borough's rules will apply on the Essex side tend to find out otherwise when the offer letters arrive.
Schools are one of Chigwell's real strengths. The primaries are strong, the county grades are high, and there is a private school with nearly four centuries behind it. For most families, the schools will be the easy part of moving here.