Gillingham's schools are the part of the town nobody needs to apologise for. More than nine in ten graded schools are good or better. A handful are outstanding. Two are rated inadequate. The average is safe, so the job is checking the exceptions.
Across the area's 29 state primaries, pupils average about 104 in the end-of-primary maths assessment. That's a solid number for a town that estate agents don't tend to sell on its schools. Department for Transport modelling from 2019 puts the nearest primary about an eight-minute walk from home, so the morning run doesn't need a car, whatever the queue of cars outside the gates suggests. Twydall Primary School and Nursery serves one of the older suburbs, and Hempstead Infant School sits at the start of the valley road. Both give a sense of how local primary schooling works here: the school at the end of the street, not across town.
The seven state secondaries in the area average about 46 on the government's Attainment 8 measure at 16. On the same 2019 modelling, the nearest secondary is about 21 minutes on foot, which is long enough for teenagers to complain about and short enough that they'll do it anyway. The list reflects Gillingham's history. The Howard School began life as the town's boys' grammar school, opened in 1923, and took its current name in 1975. Rainham Mark Grammar School started out as a technical school. Brompton Academy has changed names more often than most of the town's pubs, which tells you how many relaunches one building can take. Grammar schools in the mix mean selective places are part of the picture, and parents who swore they'd never care about an entrance test tend to discover they do.
Ofsted has graded 40 schools across the Medway council area, which covers more than Gillingham, and 37 of them are good or better. That's more than nine in ten. Four are outstanding, one requires improvement and two are inadequate. The rest either haven't been graded yet or don't have a published grade, and that tells you nothing either way. The reason to look up the specific school is those two inadequate ratings, not the average.
None of this guarantees a place. A school's name on a map near the house isn't an offer letter. Admissions follow the council's rules, and grammar schools add a test on top. Plenty of listings say "close to good schools" as if distance were a contract. It isn't. Check the admissions criteria for the exact school before you check the kitchen.
Schools are one of Gillingham's real strengths. Buyers who look up the one school they're counting on will find the town has done most of the work already.