Good, and the parents know it to the nearest exam mark. Nine in ten schools across the county are rated good or better. The primaries score well in maths. The grammar schools still sort children at eleven. The schools aren't the worry here. The eleven plus is.
There are 16 state primaries in the area, and their average end-of-primary maths score comes out at about 106, comfortably clear of the line that marks the expected standard. That's the number that shows up in house prices whether the listing admits it or not. St Matthew's High Brooms Church of England Voluntary Controlled Primary School covers the northern edge of town near the station, while The Wells Free School carries the town's name into the newer end of the system. The rest are a spread of church and community schools, most of them within walking distance of the families who chose their house because of them.
At secondary level, the six state secondaries in the area post a pupil-weighted Attainment 8 score of about 56. Kent is one of the few places in England that still runs selective education through the eleven plus, so Tunbridge Wells Girls' Grammar School and Tunbridge Wells Grammar School for Boys take the children who pass it, and schools such as Skinners' Kent Academy sit alongside them in the same town. That score is the whole mix, grammar and non-selective together. Split it, and the arithmetic of the eleven plus gets personal.
Ofsted has graded 245 schools and settings across Kent, and 221 of them are good or outstanding, which is roughly nine in ten. Of the rest, 38 are outstanding at the top end, 21 require improvement and three are rated inadequate. These are county-wide counts covering the whole of Kent, not a tally of Tunbridge Wells on its own, and settings without a published grade are left out rather than counted as poor.
A school's name on this page isn't a place at that school. Primary admissions tend to come down to distance and the council's criteria, and the grammars depend on the eleven plus result before anything else. The families who check the admissions rules before the mortgage offer tend to get what they paid for. The ones who assume living near the gate is enough find out in the spring, and the rules turn out to be honest, just not generous.
The schools are one of the town's real strengths, strong at both ages with a county inspection record to match. The only thing standing between most children and a good place is the paperwork.