BeforeIBuyHonest. Maybe too honest.
№ 03 / 09 · Schools

What are the schools like in Oakley, Hampshire?

For anyone buying or renting in Oakley, Hampshire.

Good, and the odds are on your side. Nearly nine in ten graded schools across the county are good or better. Oakley has its own infant school and its own junior school. For secondary school, children leave the village. The admissions rules will cause you more trouble than the inspection reports.

Ofsted has graded 211 schools and settings across Hampshire, and 185 of them are rated good or outstanding, which is close to nine in every ten. Those figures cover the whole county, not only Oakley and the villages around it, so they describe the system your child is entering rather than the single school down the road. Within them, 27 are outstanding, 16 require improvement and 10 are inadequate. That leaves a small tail at the bottom. It exists, and it isn't what most Oakley parents deal with. A further 226 settings hold no published grade at all. That tells you nothing either way, and it shouldn't be read as bad news.

Living near a school doesn't guarantee a place in it. Admission depends on the council's rules and on how many other families applied that year, not on how close the house felt on the viewing. Named schools here are local options, not promises. Buyers who treat a school's name as part of the purchase price sometimes discover that the council ranks applicants by its own rules, which take no account of what the listing said.

The school that carries the village name is really two schools: Oakley Infant School and Oakley Church of England Junior School. That split means changing school partway through primary. Parents should check how the move from infant to junior works, rather than assuming it happens automatically. Winklebury Infant School and Winklebury Junior School sit on the Basingstoke side and follow the same split. North Waltham Primary School, which this page also covers, runs as a single primary for the smaller village to the south. At secondary age the choice moves out of the village. Perins School is one of the named secondary options in the surrounding area. A wider spread of primaries across the nearby villages, including several Church of England schools, gives families alternatives if the first choice is full.

Oakley's schools are one of its real strengths. The system they belong to is mostly good, and the harder part is securing a place, not finding a good school.

Check it for your address. Admission rules and inspection results change from year to year, so before counting on a place, read the latest reports on Ofsted and your council's admissions rules.

Sources: Ofsted

Data to April 2026 · Figures checked 27 September 2026 (what this means)