Hertford's schools are good enough that the hard part is getting into one. Nearly nine in ten graded schools across the county are good or better. The town has three secondaries of its own. One of them takes children from reception to sixth form. The quality of the schools isn't really in question here. The admissions rules are.
Ofsted has graded 227 schools across Hertfordshire, and 203 of them were rated good or outstanding, close to nine in every ten. Forty were outstanding, 21 required improvement and three were rated inadequate. Another 226 settings in the county hold no published grade yet and do not count in either column. These are county-wide counts, so they describe the school system Hertford belongs to more than the handful of gates you walk past on the school run.
The town's secondary choice is Richard Hale School, The Sele School and Simon Balle All-Through School. Simon Balle stands out because it covers primary and secondary under one roof, so one admissions decision can settle two school moves. Places at all three, like every state school in the county, are allocated under Hertfordshire County Council's published admissions rules, and owning the house closest to the gate does not give a child a place. The council publishes how far each school's offers reached in previous years, and that is worth reading against the specific street you are looking at. Parents who skip that step find out in March whether their move was clever or just expensive.
Primary provision is spread across the town and out into the villages. Bengeo Primary School serves the north side of the river, and Abel Smith School takes its name from a nineteenth-century banker and member of parliament, which is a lot of history for a building full of five-year-olds. Hollybush, Wheatcroft, Morgans and Hertford St Andrew make up most of the rest, and Bayford has its own Church of England primary for families in the villages to the south. Every one of them is a short drive from the next, so a first preference is a decision you make carefully and a fourth preference is still in the same town.
Families who want to opt out of the state system don't have to travel far. Duncombe School and Hertford Prep are preparatory schools, and Haileybury College is in Hertford Heath at the edge of town. For parents who find nine good schools in ten not quite enough, the tenth costs a lot.
Schools are one of Hertford's real strengths. The quality is there, and the work for parents is getting a place.