Mill Hill's schools are very good, and the hard part is getting a child into the one you picked. The state primaries post strong maths results. The three state secondaries do well at sixteen. Almost every school the inspectors have graded across the wider borough comes out good or better. The schools are fine. The competition for places is the part that keeps parents up at night.
There are 10 mainstream state primaries in the area, and their pupils averaged about 108 in the Key Stage 2 maths tests at the end of primary school, a scaled score where higher is better. Millbrook Park Primary School and Dollis Primary School are two of the names families around here will hear early, along with the primary attached to St Paul's, the church William Wilberforce was patron of. The village had a church school before it had a Broadway, and the parents queueing for it now are more organised than the abolitionist was.
At secondary level the choice is narrower. The three mainstream state secondaries in the area post a pupil-weighted Attainment 8 score of about 57, the measure that adds up a pupil's grades across eight subjects at sixteen. Mill Hill County High School carries the area's name and Copthall School sits to the south of it, near Copthall and Holders Hill, and between them they do most of the work for local families. A separate local foundation runs its own set of schools for parents who want to opt out of the state queue altogether. Three secondaries is a short list, and in Mill Hill the Year 6 application form gets more attention than the mortgage offer did.
Barnet's record with Ofsted is strong across the board. Of the 59 schools the borough has with a published inspection grade, 57 are rated good or better, which is nearly all of them, and 12 are outstanding. Two require improvement and none is inadequate. A further 66 settings across Barnet hold no published grade yet, which says nothing about their quality either way. Losing a good school in Barnet takes some effort.
Places are handed out under the council's published admissions rules, and that matters here more than most buyers allow for, because a house round the corner from a named school does not on its own secure a place there. Barnet publishes how far from each school the last place offered went in recent years, and that figure is worth reading for the two or three schools you actually want, ahead of any viewing. A family that buys on the strength of a school's name and skips the admissions booklet can end up with a lovely house and a long school run in the wrong direction.
Schools are one of Mill Hill's real strengths: the primaries and secondaries are as good as the borough's results suggest, and the only thing harder to come by than a good school here is a place in the specific one you wanted.