Horsham's schools are good, and the hard part is getting into the one you picked. Across the county, more than eight in ten graded schools are good or outstanding. The average home is under ten minutes' walk from a primary. The sixth-form college has been going since the reign of Henry VIII. Finding a good school here is easy. Getting a place at the one you chose is the real exam.
Ofsted has graded 122 schools across West Sussex, and 103 of them are good or better, a clear majority. Eleven are outstanding, 17 require improvement and two are inadequate. These counts cover the whole county, not Horsham alone, so they describe the system your child enters rather than the school at the end of your road. Another 125 settings hold no published overall grade yet and are left out of those figures entirely. The odds favour you, but the county-wide count won't tell you which school you'll get.
Distance is on your side. The Department for Transport's 2019 modelling puts the nearest primary about 10 minutes' walk from the average home, or about 7 minutes by car. Secondary school is about 25 minutes on foot, 17 by public transport and 10 by car. For most families the primary run can be done on foot, and the secondary run can too, as long as nobody forgot their PE kit.
A few names say something about the town. The College of Richard Collyer, known to everyone as Collyer's, is the sixth-form college on Hurst Road and was founded in 1532, which makes it older than most of the arguments parents have about it. For secondary, the names that come up are Millais School, Tanbridge House School, The Forest School and Bohunt Horsham, a mix that gives families a genuine choice rather than one default and a long bus ride. Christ's Hospital, the independent boarding school just outside town, sits among its listed buildings with an arts centre and a dining hall grand enough to be listed on their own. The rest of the primaries cover the town's estates and the surrounding villages, from church schools in Warnham and Slinfold to community schools in Holbrook and North Heath.
None of this guarantees a place. West Sussex allocates places by its admissions rules, and buying a house near a school you like is a bet, not a booking. Families who assume the nearest school is theirs find out in spring whether the rules agreed. Before you buy on the strength of a school name, check the admissions criteria, look at the last few years' allocations and read the school's most recent inspection report yourself. An estate agent's "close to excellent schools" means the building is close, not that it has a seat for your child.
Schools are one of Horsham's real strengths. The choice is wide and the standard high, and the only thing standing between your child and a good one is the admissions form.