The schools around Marlow Bottom are good, and the hard part is the test in the middle. The village has its own primary. The county still sorts children at eleven. Most schools across the county are graded good or better. The classrooms are the easy bit; the selection system is what parents lose sleep over.
Burford School is the village primary, taking children from four to eleven. The two state primaries in the area averaged about 107 in the key stage 2 maths test, and the Department for Transport's 2019 model puts the walk to a primary at about 13 minutes. Further down towards Marlow there are more, including Spinfield School and Foxes Piece School. Primary is the last stage of education in Marlow Bottom that nobody has to pass an exam to get into.
Across Buckinghamshire as a whole, Ofsted has graded 80 of 94 schools good or outstanding, which is a little more than five in every six. Nineteen of those are outstanding, while 11 require improvement and 3 are inadequate. Those numbers describe the whole county, and a family only ever deals with the two or three schools within reach.
After primary, the eleven-plus decides the route: children go on to a grammar school or a secondary modern depending on the result. Places at every stage are allocated under the council's published admissions rules, so living close to a school does not secure a seat in it. The nearby secondaries are Sir William Borlase's Grammar School and Great Marlow School, and the 2019 model puts a secondary about 36 minutes away on foot or 11 by car. In a village where about half the adults hold degrees, the eleven-plus tends to become a household project some time before the child is told it exists.
Schools are one of Marlow Bottom's real strengths: a solid primary on the doorstep and a county that grades most of its schools well. What makes parents anxious is the sorting at eleven, and that is Buckinghamshire's design, not the valley's.