Olney's schools are very good, and the town has the school ratings to back it. Almost every graded school in the wider authority is good or better. None is rated inadequate. The primary years are a short walk away. Secondary school is where the car keys come out.
Ofsted has graded 41 of the 43 rated schools in Milton Keynes as good or outstanding, almost all of them. Six are outstanding, 35 good and two require improvement, with none inadequate. Another 53 settings across the authority have no published grade yet, which tells you nothing either way. The authority-wide spread is useful as a backdrop. For a parent the useful part is how few weak options there are to land in by accident.
Locally the schools carry the town's name and show its structure. Olney Infant Academy and Olney Middle School take children through the early and middle years, and Lavendon School serves the village a few minutes up the road. The village school at Emberton has closed, so families on that side of the river look to Olney instead. Places at all of these are allocated under Milton Keynes City Council's published admissions rules, so living near the gate helps without ever securing a place. The children of all these schools also run in Olney's children's pancake race, which is the one local admissions contest settled entirely on speed.
The Department for Transport's 2019 modelling puts the nearest primary about nine minutes' walk from the typical home, or about seven minutes by car. Secondary is a different trip: about 19 minutes by car, 41 minutes by public transport and well over an hour and a half on foot. The public transport figure is the oldest part of that picture, because buses have had several years to change since. Look up the council's admissions criteria for secondary transfer from Olney Middle School, and the actual school bus route, for the year your child will move up. Primary is a walk, and after that the school run depends on a bus timetable.
Schools are one of Olney's real strengths. The choice of school matters less here than the drive to it.