Schools are one of the things Didcot does well. Nearly nine in ten graded schools across the county are rated good or better. The two older secondaries teach boys and girls separately until sixth form. Two newer schools arrived with the new estates. For once, a town that keeps building houses has built the classrooms to go with them.
Across Oxfordshire, the authority Didcot's schools report to, Ofsted has graded 121 schools and settings, and 108 of them, close to nine in ten, are good or outstanding. Eleven are outstanding, ten require improvement and three are inadequate. Another 151 have no published grade yet, so they count for neither side.
The secondary picture has two halves. St Birinus School takes boys and Didcot Girls' School takes girls, and the two come together for a shared sixth form. The single-sex split is the one decision the town takes for parents, and it takes it when their child is eleven. The newer half came with the growth to the west. University Technical College Oxfordshire opened in 2015 on the boundary between Didcot and Harwell, and Aureus School followed in 2017 alongside Great Western Park. The land speed record team behind Bloodhound once ran its head office from the technical college site, which rather spoils any teenager's complaint about the walk in.
Among the primaries, All Saints Church of England Primary School carries the name of the town's oldest church, Ladygrove Park Primary School serves the big estate north of the railway, and Didcot Primary Academy opened in 2016 on Great Western Park, although it is technically in Harwell parish. The Department for Transport's modelled times from 2019 put the nearest primary about 8 minutes' walk away on average and the nearest secondary about 18. Oxfordshire County Council allocates places under its published admissions rules, so a house round the corner from a named school does not secure a place there, and anyone buying on Ladygrove or Great Western Park for a particular primary should look up how far from the gate last year's offers reached. Families on the newest streets tend to learn the difference between "nearest" and "allocated" by letter.
Schools are one of Didcot's real strengths. The county's record is strong enough that the main choice left to parents is which of four secondaries suits their child.