The schools are one of the best things about living in Greenwich. Almost every graded school in the borough is rated good or better. None is rated inadequate. Primaries are a short walk from most front doors. In a place where much of the rest of the list comes with a catch, this part comes with very little.
Across the Royal Borough of Greenwich, Ofsted has given 37 of the 40 graded settings in this count a good or outstanding rating, so almost all of them. Eleven are outstanding, three require improvement and none is inadequate. A further 38 settings have no published overall grade yet. They are simply waiting for an inspection, and they are left out of the count either way.
The primaries close to the river include St Alfege with St Peter's Church of England Primary School, Christ Church Church of England Primary School and St Joseph's Catholic Primary School. Out towards the peninsula there are Meridian Primary School and Millennium Primary School. The names show which two Greenwich stories the borough likes to tell, the longitude line and the dome. James Wolfe Primary School also runs a centre for deaf children alongside its mainstream classes. The Department for Transport modelled the walk to the nearest primary at about six minutes in 2019, and about 12 minutes to the nearest secondary.
Living near any of these schools does not get your child a place. The Royal Borough of Greenwich allocates places under its published admissions rules, and the three church schools above can also weigh faith criteria set out in their own policies. If a particular primary is the reason for the move, ask the council how far from the gate last year's offers went. Then check that distance against the house, because the brochure measuring it from the front door is doing its own sums.
The secondary named in this area is St Ursula's Convent School, founded in 1850. That makes it older than most of the streets its pupils walk down. The University of Greenwich and Ravensbourne add higher education on the doorstep, for families planning that far ahead.
Schools are among Greenwich's real strengths. With the borough's inspected schools almost all rated good or outstanding, the hard part here is getting a place.