Danbury's schools are good, and the primaries are the strongest part. The village has its own primary schools. It has no secondary, so older children leave the village every morning. The county around it has a strong Ofsted record. For families, the main question is where the bus goes once a child reaches eleven.
Across the seven state primaries in the area, the average Key Stage 2 maths score is 105. Danbury Park Community Primary School and St John Church of England Voluntary Controlled Primary School Danbury both carry the village name. Priory Primary School, Bicknacre is close by. Parents usually say the village school's name before they mention the house.
Secondary school is less tidy. The one mainstream state secondary counted in the area has a pupil-weighted Attainment 8 score of about 43. William de Ferrers School and Plume School are the secondaries named in the wider area, and both are outside the village. Every Danbury family with a child over eleven has to plan for a journey to school, whether or not they planned for it when they bought.
Essex as a whole is in good shape. Ofsted has graded 246 settings across Essex County Council's area, and 218 of them are good or better, close to nine in ten. Of those graded settings, 22 are outstanding, 23 require improvement and 5 are inadequate. A further 238 settings across the county have no published grade yet, which only means Ofsted has not got to them.
Living close to a school does not settle anything. Essex County Council allocates places using its published admissions rules, so a house near Danbury Park or St John's gives a family a stronger application and nothing more. Look up last year's allocation figures for the specific primary on the council's admissions pages and compare them with the distance from the house you are buying. Danbury also has independent options, Heathcote School and Elm Green Preparatory School among them, for families who would rather pay fees than rely on the admissions rules.
Schools are one of Danbury's real strengths, especially at primary age. The main thing families have to plan for is the secondary years, when every child travels out of the village.