Hatfield's schools are one of the town's best arguments. The primaries score well in maths. The two state secondaries post solid results. Nearly nine in ten graded schools across the county are good or outstanding. Getting a place is the harder part, and the council decides that one.
Around Hatfield, the 4 mainstream state primaries average a Key Stage 2 maths score of about 105, the scaled score pupils sit at the end of primary school. The schools in and around the town include Howe Dell Primary School and St Philip Howard Catholic Primary School, with others spread across the New Town estates and the villages. Four schools is a small base, so a single strong or weak year group can shift that average more than parents comparing towns tend to allow for.
At secondary level, the 2 mainstream state schools in the area post a pupil-weighted Attainment 8 score of about 60, the average across a pupil's best eight GCSE subjects. Bishop's Hatfield Girls' School and Onslow St Audrey's School are the two secondaries in the town. The first still carries the name Hatfield went by after Henry III gave the Bishops of Ely its market in 1226, so the most medieval thing in the New Town turns out to be a girls' school. Families paying fees have Queenswood School, an independent girls' day and boarding school, on the doorstep as well.
Hertfordshire County Council's area holds 203 good-or-better schools out of 227 that Ofsted has graded, which is close to nine in ten. Of those, 40 are rated outstanding, 21 require improvement and 3 are inadequate. That spread describes the whole county, from Watford to the Cambridgeshire border, so it says how the system around Hatfield performs and nothing specific about the school at the end of a particular road. Another 226 settings in the county have no published grade yet, which tells you only that Ofsted has not got round to them.
Places in Hertfordshire are handed out under the county council's published admissions rules, and living near one of the schools above does not on its own secure a seat in it. Faith schools such as St Philip Howard set their own criteria inside those rules, and a girls' school takes half the town's children off the table before the distances are even measured. The useful check is the council's record of how far from each school the last place was offered in recent years, read for the specific school a buyer has in mind. A house bought on the strength of a school name in the particulars is a bet on the admissions office agreeing.
For a town better known for its crime figures and its campus, Hatfield's schools are a strong reason to come, and parents who get the place they asked for have very little to complain about.