The schools around Epping are good, and the county they come from does better than a nervous parent might expect. Nearly nine in ten graded schools are good or better. The nearest primary is a short walk for most families. The secondary takes longer to reach. Essex has a handful of weak schools too, and the trick is knowing which ones are yours.
In Essex, Ofsted has graded 246 schools and other settings, and 218 of them are rated good or outstanding, nearly nine in ten. Of those, 22 are outstanding. At the other end, 23 require improvement and 5 are inadequate. Another 238 settings have no published grade yet, which tells you nothing either way. "Excellent local schools" in an Epping listing is a county-wide average with the town's name attached.
The names closest to home are Epping Primary School and Ivy Chimneys Primary School in the town, plus Coopersale and Theydon Garnon Church of England Voluntary Controlled Primary School on the Coopersale side. Epping St Johns Church of England School is the secondary carrying the town's name, and Coopersale Hall School is listed separately from the state primaries. Living near any of them does not secure a place, because Essex County Council allocates places under its published admissions rules, and the church schools can set criteria of their own. Read the admissions policy for St Johns and the Coopersale primary yourself, since a church school's rules can differ from the county's. The Department for Transport's 2019 modelling puts the nearest primary about 11 minutes' walk away on average, and the nearest secondary about 30 minutes on foot, 22 by public transport and 11 by car. Thirty minutes is long enough for any teenager to come up with three reasons to be driven.
Schools are one of Epping's real strengths, with a county list good enough that the worry is mostly about getting the place, never about the standard once you have it.