Egham's schools are a strong reason to live here. More than nine in ten graded schools across the county are good or outstanding. Thirty carry the top grade. Only a handful are rated below good. The town has a comprehensive with a famous name, a run of primaries and, up the hill, a university.
Across Surrey, Ofsted has graded 147 of 159 schools and settings good or outstanding, about 92%, and 30 of those are outstanding. At the other end, seven require improvement and five are inadequate. A further 194 settings have no published grade yet, which tells a parent nothing either way. The grade profile describes the whole county, so it sets the odds for Egham without describing any one classroom in it.
The secondary most families here plan around is The Magna Carta School in Egham Hythe, a comprehensive that has gone by other names in earlier lives. Places there, and at every state school in town, are allocated under Surrey's published admissions rules, so a house round the corner from the gates helps without securing anything. Hythe Primary School serves the same side of town, and Manorcroft Primary School is among the primaries towards the Egham end. A comprehensive named after the founding document of English rights still hands out its places by the admissions policy, which is the part the house hunt tends to skip. Read the Surrey admissions rules and last year's allocation for any school you are counting on, and do it while you are still choosing streets.
Egham also has the fee-paying route, with ACS Egham International School on the edge of town, and the top of the ladder is Royal Holloway at Englefield Green. A family can, in theory, get from reception to a degree without leaving the postcode. Most children will leave anyway, if only for the gap year.
Egham's schools are one of the best things about living here, provided the family reads the admissions rules as carefully as the inspection reports.