Islington's schools are about as strong as a borough's schools get, and finding a good one is the easy part. Almost every graded school is good or better. One in four is outstanding. The nearest primary is a few minutes' walk from most front doors. The hard part is getting a place at the one you picked.
Around here there are two mainstream state primaries with published results, and their pupils average a maths score of about 104 at the end of primary school. The national standard is set at 100, so these children finish primary school ahead of it. The Department for Transport's modelled journey times, from 2019, put the nearest primary about five minutes' walk away on average and the nearest secondary about nine. In a place where seven households in ten manage without a car, the school run here is mostly done on foot.
Ofsted has graded 25 schools across the London Borough of Islington, and 24 of them are good or outstanding, which is all but one. Seven are outstanding, none requires improvement and one is inadequate. Another 32 settings in the borough have no published grade yet, so they do not count either way. These are borough-wide counts covering Islington from Highbury to King's Cross, and the inadequate school could be anywhere in that area. Parents across most of Islington can turn down a good school and still have several good ones left.
Primaries close to this part of Islington include William Tyndale, Canonbury Primary and St Andrew's (Barnsbury) CofE, with Kings Cross Academy at the Pentonville end. Places at all of them are given out under the council's published admissions rules, which put things like siblings and distance in order, so buying a flat round the corner from a school does not secure a place there. St Andrew's (Barnsbury) is a Church of England school, and church schools can also set their own faith criteria. If that is the school you are aiming for, read its admissions policy before you sign anything, because what you do on a Sunday may count as much as where you live. The rest of the local primaries are a mix of community, academy and church schools.
For secondary school, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson School and City of London Academy Islington are both close. Both are within the same nine-minute average walk, so the main stress at age eleven is the admissions criteria, not the commute. In Islington the pressure falls on the application form, not on the school bag.
Schools are where Islington is clearly at its best. The difficulty for parents here is the admissions process, not the standard of the schools.