Hitchin's schools are a good reason to put up with what the town costs. Primary results land comfortably above the expected standard. The three secondaries post solid results. Close to nine in ten graded schools across the county are good or better. Getting into the one you want is a separate fight.
Around here there are 18 mainstream state primaries, and their average Key Stage 2 maths score is about 106, where 100 marks the expected standard for an eleven-year-old. That is a consistent picture across a lot of small schools, from William Ransom Primary School near the recreation ground that carries the same family name to Samuel Lucas Junior Mixed and Infant School and Purwell Primary School on the town's eastern side. The villages add their own options, with Ickleford, Pirton, Preston and St Ippolyts each running a primary of their own. A family that buys in Pirton for the primary still ends up driving into Hitchin for the secondary.
The secondary picture is three schools deep. Hitchin Boys' School, Hitchin Girls' School and The Priory School are the mainstream state secondaries in the area, and their pupil-weighted Attainment 8 score is about 55. Attainment 8 adds up a pupil's grades across eight subjects, and a figure in the mid-fifties means a typical pupil leaves with good passes across the board. Two of the three carry a sex in their name, so a family with a son and a daughter can easily end up with two different school gates in one small town.
Hertfordshire's own count is the wider one. Across the county, Ofsted has graded 203 of 227 settings good or outstanding, close to nine in ten, with 40 rated outstanding, 21 requiring improvement and 3 inadequate. That spread covers everywhere from Hitchin to the far side of the county, so it sets the standard of the system Hitchin sits inside, and the grade of any one school is something to look up by name.
Places are handed out by Hertfordshire County Council under its published admissions rules, and living round the corner from a school buys a better chance of a place, nothing firmer, which is how parents on the wrong side of a distance cut-off learn the difference between near and close enough. The council publishes the distance each school's last offer reached in previous years, and that list is the one to read for any house a family is serious about. Parents who skip it tend to find out in spring how far the town stretches.
Schools are one of the things Hitchin does properly, strong at primary and dependable at secondary, provided the family has worked out which gate it is actually going to get.