Good, and better than the town's reputation lets on. Most schools across the county are rated good or better. A primary school is usually under ten minutes' walk away. The secondaries hold their own at sixteen. The town people drive through on the way to somewhere prettier is where the sensible parents stop.
Primary results are solid. The 17 mainstream state primaries in the area averaged about 105 in the end-of-primary maths tests. Families here pick from schools such as Earlswood Junior School, St John's Primary School and Holmesdale Community Infant School, with Merstham Primary School and Salfords Primary School and Nursery covering the edges of town. The typical walk to the nearest primary is about nine minutes, which matters more at 8.40 on a wet Tuesday than any league table. The school run is a stroll, not a war of attrition on the A23.
Secondary results hold steady. The five mainstream state secondaries in the area averaged about 52 on the Attainment 8 measure taken at sixteen, weighted by pupil numbers. Carrington School and St Bede's School both sit on the local list, and Reigate School is one short hop west. The typical walk to the nearest secondary is about 20 minutes, long enough for a teenager to perfect the art of ignoring a parent's text. None of these results makes the national papers. None of them has to.
Ofsted's grades are the strongest part of the story. Across Surrey, 147 of the 159 settings with a published grade are rated good or better, which is more than nine in ten. Thirty are outstanding, seven require improvement and five are inadequate. Those figures cover the whole county rather than Redhill alone, so they describe the system a Redhill child enters rather than the school at the end of any particular road. Some settings have not yet received a published grade, and those sit outside the count rather than dragging it down.
A school name on a listing is not a place in a classroom. Admissions follow the council's rules, and living near a school does not guarantee a seat in it. Estate agents write "close to excellent schools" in every other listing, and the admissions team has never once read one. Check the admissions criteria and last year's allocations for the specific school before pricing a house around it.
Schools are one of Redhill's real strengths, and quietly so. Parents who take the admissions rules seriously get a good education for their children in a town that rarely gets credit for it.