Good, and the primaries are the reason to move here. The local primaries sit above the expected line in maths. Nine in ten Kent schools with a published grade are rated good or better. The nearest secondary is a short drive away. Parents here get more choice than most, as long as they read beyond the prospectus.
There are five mainstream state primaries in the area, and pupils at the end of primary school averaged a maths score of about 104. That is solid rather than flashy. New Ash Green Primary School carries the village's name. Leigh Academy Hartley and Our Lady of Hartley Catholic Primary School serve the Hartley side. The average primary is about an eleven-minute walk from home, so the school run is closer to a stroll than a journey. Parents who move for a primary tend to notice that the house on the doorstep costs more than the one two streets away. Nobody has ever managed to get an admissions office to include the second one.
Secondary schools are a thinner story. There is one mainstream state secondary in the area, and it scored about 40 on Attainment 8, the measure of results across a pupil's best eight subjects. That figure deserves a proper visit rather than a glance at the website. Leigh Academy Longfield is the local option, and Meopham School is within reach nearby. The average journey to a secondary is about eleven minutes by car. Most families end up weighing more than one school, and the car does a lot of the deciding.
Ofsted's record covers the whole of Kent, not just these villages. Of the 245 settings across the county with a published grade, 221 are good or better, which is about nine in ten. Of those, 38 are rated outstanding. Another 21 require improvement and 3 are inadequate. A further 255 settings have no published grade yet. That does not make them poor, only not yet graded. The county-wide record is strong, and the weak ones are rare enough that avoiding them is a matter of reading reports, not luck.
No school named here promises a place to anyone. Admission depends on each school's own oversubscription criteria, and buying a house nearby is a bet on those rules, not a guarantee. Check the admissions policy for the specific year of entry before committing to the mortgage. Faith schools such as Our Lady of Hartley set their own criteria. An estate agent's "close to good schools" means close; it says nothing about getting in.
Schooling is one of the area's real strengths. Primaries are within walking distance, the county's inspection record is strong, and the one question worth asking, about secondary results, has an answer once you visit.