Harpenden's schools are one of the main reasons families pay to live here. The town has 11 state primaries and four state secondaries. Across the county, close to nine in ten graded schools are rated good or outstanding. Three private schools add to the choice. Parents here treat the school question as settled, and mostly they are right.
Pupils at the 11 mainstream state primaries in the area averaged about 109 in their end-of-primary maths tests. The primaries range from Crabtree Infants' School to St Nicholas CofE VA Primary School, which shares its name with the town's oldest church, the chapel of ease built in 1217. The Department for Transport modelled the walk to the nearest primary at about 10 minutes in 2019, so for most families the school run is on foot. Harpenden was measuring children long before the league tables, when the National Children's Home on Highfield Oval took part in the Harpenden Growth Study. The parents have kept the habit going.
The four mainstream state secondaries in the area, Roundwood Park School, Sir John Lawes School, St George's School and Katherine Warington School, average an Attainment 8 score of about 60, weighted by pupil numbers. The same 2019 modelling puts the walk to the nearest secondary at about 22 minutes. Roundwood is a name a child here can follow from Roundwood Primary School at four to Roundwood Park School at sixteen, if the admissions rules agree.
Ofsted has graded 227 schools and settings across Hertfordshire, the whole county, and 203 of them are good or outstanding, which is close to nine in ten. Of those, 40 are outstanding, while 21 require improvement and three are inadequate. Another 226 settings in the county have no published grade yet and are counted in none of those figures. A county-wide spread like that covers a great deal of Hertfordshire that is nowhere near Harpenden.
Places are handed out under Hertfordshire County Council's published admissions rules, so buying near a school gets you a seat at the kitchen table and nothing more certain. Each school's own criteria are published, and the ones with a faith or academy structure, St Nicholas included, can set their own, so read them for the specific school before settling on a street. That is why a dinner party in Harpenden can turn to oversubscription criteria before the starters are cleared.
The town also has three private schools, Aldwickbury School, St Hilda's School and The King's School, for families who would sooner settle the matter with a cheque.
Schooling is one of the places where Harpenden earns its prices, and the families who come here for it rarely end up regretting that part of the decision.