The schools are the best thing about Gants Hill, and the families paying to live here know it. The primaries score well above the expected standard in maths. The secondaries post strong exam results. Almost every graded school in the borough is rated good or better. For once, parents here have chosen a place where the school talk at the gate matches the results.
There are five mainstream state primaries in the area, and their pupils average about 108 in the year-six maths tests, comfortably above the score the test sets as the expected standard. Gearies Primary School and Newbury Park Primary School are two of the names families meet first. The Newbury Park one serves the eastern side of the area, towards the station that shares its name. William Torbitt Primary School is also nearby. The average has no weak school pulling it down, and it is high enough that most parents comparing primaries are choosing between good options.
The three mainstream state secondaries in the area have a pupil-weighted Attainment 8 score of about 56. Attainment 8 is the government's measure of how pupils do across their best GCSE subjects. Valentines High School is the closest to the Ilford side and takes its name from the park and mansion next door, so the walk to school passes some listed railings. Oaks Park High School is the other name local parents tend to mention. Seven Kings School appears on both the primary and secondary lists, so a child who starts there at four can stay right through to GCSEs without another application.
Across the London Borough of Redbridge, Ofsted has given 33 of the 35 graded settings a rating of good or outstanding, so nearly all of them. Five are outstanding, two require improvement and none is inadequate. Another 29 settings have no published overall grade yet. They are unrated, which says nothing either way about how good they are. Redbridge council allocates places under its published admissions rules, so living near a school does not secure a place there, however short the walk from the front door. Look up the distance at which each school's places ran out last year in the council's allocation figures. That distance is often shorter than the brochure's map suggests. In this borough, two schools needing improvement is about as bad as the news gets.
Schools are the part of Gants Hill a parent can recommend without having to add any qualifications. For a family weighing up the house prices, they are the reason to pay them.