Ealing's schools are very good, and that is the main reason so many families stretch to buy here. Almost every graded school in the borough has been rated good or outstanding. None has been rated inadequate. More than a dozen are outstanding. Getting a place at one is harder than finding a good one.
Ofsted has given a published grade to 39 settings across the London Borough of Ealing, and 36 of them are good or better, all but three. Fourteen are outstanding, three require improvement and none is inadequate. Another 49 settings in the borough have no published overall grade yet, so they are left out of those counts, and that tells a parent nothing either way about how good they are. For a borough this size, the gap between the best schools and the worst is small, and the families arguing over which is best are mostly arguing between good and outstanding.
Within that, the primaries closest to home are some of the best-known in the district. North Ealing Primary School, Montpelier Primary School and Little Ealing Primary School are all here, and Little Ealing still carries the name of one of the old hamlets that grew into the parish long before anyone was arguing over admissions. Ealing council allocates places under its published admissions rules, and the address on the deeds does not buy a seat in any particular classroom, however close the gate is. Ealing has been listing exactly who lives in which household since its 1599 census, and the admissions office carries on the habit.
At secondary age, the nearby options include Ada Lovelace Church of England High School and Ealing Fields Church of England High School, and church schools usually set their own admissions criteria on top of the council's. Families who want to pay fees have St Benedict's School and St Augustine's Priory within reach. The Department for Transport's modelled journey times, from 2019, put the nearest primary about a nine-minute walk away and the nearest secondary about 15 minutes on foot, or roughly 14 by public transport. For any school you are counting on, ask the council how far from the gate the last place was offered in recent years, and measure your shortlisted house against that distance. Plenty of Ealing parents only learn how short that distance is after they have exchanged contracts.
For a family, schools are one of Ealing's real strengths. The quality is not in doubt. Securing the place is the only hard part.