Cranleigh's schools are good, and the house prices have noticed. The primaries post solid maths results. The village's one state secondary holds its own. More than nine in ten Surrey schools with a grade are rated good or better. The hard part is getting a place, not the teaching.
There are three mainstream state primaries around here, and their pupils averaged a scaled score of about 103 in the end-of-primary maths tests. That's comfortably respectable rather than headline-grabbing. Cranleigh Church of England Primary School carries the village's name. It opened in 2008 when the infant school and St Nicolas Junior merged, which is the tidy local way of solving two sets of school gates. Park Mead Primary is the other obvious option. The modelled walk to the nearest primary is about 14 minutes, which is short enough that parents who still do the school run by car are driving by choice.
Glebelands School is the only mainstream state secondary in the area. Its pupils averaged an Attainment 8 score of about 53 across their best eight GCSE subjects. With no choice of state secondary in the village, most families will end up judging Glebelands on its results, whatever they think of it at the parents' evening. The modelled walk to the nearest secondary is about 25 minutes, which counts as a commute by teenage standards.
Then there is Cranleigh School, the independent boarding school that opened in 1865. For some families it is the reason to buy in the village. For others it is the big building they drive past on the way to Glebelands.
Ofsted's figures cover the whole of Surrey, not just Cranleigh. Of the 159 Surrey settings that currently hold an overall grade, 147 are good or better, and that includes 30 rated outstanding. Seven require improvement and five are inadequate. Surrey is a strong county to be choosing schools in, and Cranleigh sits in the part of it where parents check the results twice.
A school carrying the village's name is not a guaranteed place. Admission is decided by the council's and the schools' own criteria, and buying a house near the gates only helps if you meet them. Check the published admissions arrangements for the exact year you're applying before you exchange contracts, not after. One more warning for anyone working from old lists: Woodland Grange has closed and is not an option.
Schools are one of Cranleigh's real strengths: strong primaries, a secondary that does the job, and a county where good is normal. The difficult part is getting a place.