Highgate's schools are very good, and the borough behind them barely has a weak one. Almost every graded school is good or better. Nearly half are outstanding. None is inadequate. The difficult part is getting a place, because the schools themselves are rarely the problem.
Haringey has graded 36 of its schools, and Ofsted rated 35 of them good or better, which is all but one. Sixteen are outstanding and 19 are good. One requires improvement and none is inadequate. A further 37 settings in the borough have no published grade yet, which tells a parent nothing either way. Anyone in Haringey hoping for a school to worry about will have to work quite hard to find one.
Those grades describe Haringey as a whole, and places are allocated under the council's published admissions rules, so a house near a school's front gate buys a good chance and no certainty. Highgate also falls across three boroughs: Haringey in the north and east, Camden in the south and west and Islington in the south and east. The council whose rules apply depends on which side of a borough line the house is on, and the admissions booklet for that council, along with the distances recent places actually went to, should be read alongside the sale particulars. For many families, the borough line will matter more than the line between one school and the next.
The names on the area's list say a lot about it. Highgate Primary School carries the place's name, and Whitehall Park School and St Michael's, the Church of England voluntary aided primary, are close by too. St Aloysius' College is the secondary on the area's list, so for many children the move up from primary means a longer journey to school. The area's other schools include Channing School and Highgate School. Highgate School has stood on Hampstead Lane and Highgate Hill since Elizabeth I gave it letters patent in 1565, and no reference from any later headteacher has carried quite the same weight.
The schools are one of Highgate's clear strengths. The hard part for families is securing a place at the right one.