East Barnet's schools are the part of the price that pays you back. Nearly every school inspectors have graded across the borough is good or better. The local primaries score well in maths. The secondaries hold their own. Parents who bought here for the schools got what they paid for, which in this postcode is an unusual sentence.
Seven mainstream state primaries serve the area, and at key stage 2 they average a maths scaled score of about 108. St Mary's CofE Primary School, East Barnet is the one that carries the place's name. Danegrove Primary School and Livingstone Primary and Nursery School are among the others families around here will know. None of these schools needs a parent to apologise for it at a dinner party, which leaves the parents fighting over which good school to choose.
Three mainstream state secondaries serve the area, and their pupil-weighted Attainment 8 score at key stage 4 is about 55. East Barnet School is the obvious local choice, and Alan Coren went there long before anyone thought to put it in a property listing. Southgate School is another option nearby. With only three secondaries for the area, families tend to know the shortlist well before their child does.
Barnet Council's area as a whole has 59 settings with a published Ofsted grade, and 57 of them are good or better, which is nearly all of them. Twelve are outstanding, two require improvement and none are inadequate. Another 66 settings across the borough have no published grade yet. They have not been inspected, which tells you nothing about them in either direction.
Schools near East Barnet allocate places under Barnet Council's published admissions rules, so a house round the corner from St Mary's or East Barnet School buys a better chance and nothing more certain. The council publishes how each school's places were allocated last year, and reading that before choosing a street is the most useful thing a parent can do. A house can be next to a school and still fall outside the reach of that year's offers. Buying the house and assuming the school comes with it has given more than one family a hard lesson in the admissions rules.
East Barnet's schools are among its real strengths. A family buying here gets strong schools at every stage, and has paid a premium to get them.