The schools are one of Codicote's real strengths, and that starts at the primary in the village itself. Primary results around here are solid. Nearly every school the county has graded is good or better. The trouble begins at eleven, when your children's secondary school is a drive away.
Codicote Church of England Primary School is the village's own. It dates from 1857, and the current building on Meadow Way went up in 1972. The Department for Transport's 2019 model puts the nearest primary about nine minutes' walk from the typical home. Across the 13 state primaries in the area, the average Key Stage 2 maths score is about 105. Kimpton Primary School and St Paul's Walden Primary School serve the villages to the west and north. Most children here can reach a primary school on foot in about the time it takes to find their shoes.
Secondary school is a different trip. The two state secondaries counted in the area have a pupil-weighted Attainment 8 score of about 45. Two schools is a small base, and one strong year group or one weak one can move that average more than any change in teaching. Hitchin Girls' School is among the schools pupils move on to, and Hitchin is where most of the secondary options are. The same 2019 model puts the nearest secondary about 15 minutes away by car, about 28 by public transport and about an hour on foot. A nine-minute walk to primary becomes an hour's walk to secondary, and that is how Codicote's children find out what "local" means in Year 7.
Hertfordshire has 227 schools and settings with a published Ofsted grade, and 203 of them are good or better, close to nine in ten. Of the rest, 40 are outstanding, 21 require improvement and three are inadequate. That is a county-wide picture. A strong Hertfordshire average tells you nothing about the particular school your child would get into.
Places are given out under Hertfordshire County Council's published admissions rules. Living near a school, or on the right side of the village, does not secure a place there. For Codicote Church of England Primary School, ask the council's admissions team how far away the last child offered a place lived in recent years, because that distance is what the rules work from. Parents tend to learn this when the offer letters arrive, and learning it then is too late.
Codicote's schools are a real strength, a good village primary backed by a strong county record. The price of that is a daily drive to secondary school for the next five years.