Kennington's schools are good, and there's one close by. Most graded schools across the borough are rated good or better. The nearest primary is about five minutes' walk away on the modelled times. The nearest secondary is under ten. The harder part is getting a place.
Of the 41 schools Ofsted has graded in Lambeth, 35 are rated good or better, which is about six in every seven. Eleven are outstanding and 24 are good. Five require improvement and one is inadequate. Another 32 settings in Lambeth haven't been graded yet. Those don't count towards the totals in either direction, because there is nothing published to count.
The Department for Transport's modelled journey times, which date from 2019, put the nearest primary about four and a half minutes' walk from the typical Kennington home and the nearest secondary about nine and a half minutes. On public transport the secondary takes about the same time. Being close doesn't secure a place. Lambeth Council allocates places by its published admissions rules, and the school at the end of the road has its own list of who comes first. In a district this dense, plenty of other families are equally close to it. The useful thing to look up is how far from each school last year's final offer reached, which Lambeth publishes. That distance is often shorter than a viewing makes it feel.
Kennington has plenty of primaries within reach, among them Henry Fawcett Primary School, Walnut Tree Walk Primary School, St Mark's Church of England Primary School and Vauxhall Primary School, along with others nearby. Families can choose between a handful of primaries within a few streets of each other. Being near several of them doesn't get a child into any of them.
Lilian Baylis Technology School is the nearby secondary. King's College London Maths School is a specialist school in the area that takes a much narrower intake than an ordinary comprehensive. There are also specialist and alternative settings, such as The Park College and Vanguard School, for children whose needs a mainstream classroom doesn't meet. Any child here who takes sport seriously has a lot of local history to live up to. The Oval staged the first FA Cup final in 1872, and the Gymnastic Society was playing football on Kennington Common in the eighteenth century.
Schools are one of Kennington's real strengths. Most of the graded schools around it are rated good or better, and they are close enough to walk to.