Great Dunmow's schools are good, and the primaries are better than good. The local primaries beat the national benchmark in maths. The one state secondary is solid. Across Essex, nearly nine in ten graded schools are good or better. For parents, the hard part is getting a place.
There are nine state primaries in the area, and their pupils average 105 in the maths tests at the end of primary school. The town has two primaries with its own name in the title, Great Dunmow Primary School and Dunmow St Mary's Primary School, and The Flitch Green Academy serves the newer estates to the south-east. Village schools such as Thaxted Primary School and Stebbing Primary School sit within reach of the outskirts. Parents get a choice of primaries, and the bigger worry is the queue for each one.
The area has one mainstream state secondary, Helena Romanes School, and its pupils average about 47 on the Attainment 8 measure across their best eight GCSE subjects. With one state secondary, the choice of secondary school mostly comes down to where the family lives.
Of the 246 schools and settings Ofsted has graded across Essex, 218 are rated good or better, so close to nine in ten. Twenty-two are outstanding, 23 require improvement and five are inadequate. Those numbers cover the whole county, from Harlow to the Suffolk border, and Great Dunmow is only a small part of the count.
Essex County Council allocates places under its published admissions rules, and living close to Great Dunmow Primary School does not on its own guarantee a child a place there. The council publishes each school's oversubscription rules and the distance at which last year's offers stopped, and both are free to read. Looking them up takes ten minutes and tells a buyer more about the house than the brochure for it does.
Schools are one of Great Dunmow's real strengths. Strong primaries and a decent secondary mean most families can stay local for their children's whole education.