Schools are one of the better reasons to move to Northleach, with one catch: the town's secondary school has moved away. Almost nine in ten graded schools across the county are good or better. The primary is a short walk from most homes. The secondary is a bus ride away at best. Families get the easy years on the doorstep and the hard ones down the road.
Across Gloucestershire, Ofsted has graded 136 of 156 schools good or better, almost nine in ten. Nine are outstanding, 19 require improvement and one is inadequate. Another 95 settings have no published grade yet, which tells you nothing either way about how good they are. These are county-wide counts, so they describe the system Northleach families draw on, and each school a child might attend is graded separately.
Northleach Church of England Primary School is the one carrying the town's name, and the Department for Transport's 2019 modelling puts the nearest primary about nine minutes' walk from the typical home. Round the town are small village primaries, among them Sherborne Church of England Primary School, Cold Aston Church of England Primary School and Withington Church of England Primary School, which serve the hamlets around Northleach. Gloucestershire County Council allocates places by its published admissions rules, and living near a school does not secure a place there, however short the walk to the gate. A small village primary has very few places in each year group, so one big intake of siblings can fill a class before a new family on the same lane gets a look in.
The nearest secondary takes about 16 minutes by car on the same 2019 modelling and about 29 by public transport. Walking is not a realistic option. The Cotswold Academy is the obvious name, and its own history explains the drive: it opened in 1988 when Bourton-on-the-Water's secondary modern merged with a grammar school in Northleach. The town once had a selective school of its own and now sends its teenagers to Bourton. Winchcombe School is the other secondary in reach. On these 2019 times, families who settle for the primary and leave the secondary for later find out at eleven how much driving a Cotswold childhood involves. The latest inspection report for any school on the shortlist is on Ofsted's website, and it is worth reading in full, because the county's good-or-better count can't tell you which of these schools is having a good year.
Northleach does well on schools: a sound county system, a primary close at hand and a reputable secondary within a short drive, at the cost of a teenage school run that never quite goes away.