Good, and the parents who moved here know it. Nearly nine in ten of the county's graded schools are rated good or better. A primary is a short walk from most front doors. The town has one state secondary with its own name over the gate. None of that gets your child a place, which is where the admissions rules come in.
Ofsted has graded 211 schools and settings across Hampshire, and 185 of them are good or outstanding, so close to nine in ten. Those counts cover the whole county authority, not Petersfield alone, which makes them a view of the system your child joins rather than a verdict on the school at the end of your road. Across the county, 27 are outstanding, 16 require improvement and 10 are inadequate. That leaves a few unlucky families even in a well-run county, and the county's average does nothing for them. Another 226 settings have no published grade yet, which means only that no inspector has put a grade on them, not that they are poor.
The walks are short. On the Department for Transport's 2019 modelled journey times, the typical resident is about 13 minutes on foot from a primary and about 20 minutes from a secondary, or about 8 and 9 minutes by car. That makes the school run a walk for most families, although the traffic on the roads at twenty to nine suggests otherwise.
The town's own schools say something about the place. Petersfield Infant School and Herne Junior School carry the younger years in town. Sheet Primary School and Steep Church of England Voluntary Controlled Primary School serve the villages on the northern edge. The Petersfield School is the secondary that takes the town's name. Bedales School and Churcher's College also sit in the area, and a good share of the conversation at the school gate is about them. Further out, the villages bring their own primaries, from Buriton to the Meons, which makes this a spread of small schools rather than one big campus.
A school on a map is not a place in its classroom. Hampshire allocates places on its admissions criteria, and living near a named school does not guarantee your child a seat in it. The criteria are published, and they are honest about how places get decided. Families who read them before exchanging contracts sleep better in spring than families who assumed the nearest school was theirs by right. Check the admissions rules for the specific school and the specific address before you fall for the kitchen.
Schools are one of Petersfield's real strengths: most of the county's graded settings are good or better, and the town's own primaries and secondary are all within walking distance. The only weak link is admissions, and that depends on your address rather than on the schools.