Roydon's schools are good, and the county they belong to is good at schools. Nearly nine in ten graded schools across Essex are rated good or better. The village has its own primary, a short walk from most homes. Secondary school is where the car keys come out. For a village this size, it is a strong position to be in.
Ofsted has graded 246 schools and settings across Essex, and 218 of them are rated good or outstanding, close to nine in every ten. Of the 218, 22 are outstanding. At the other end, 23 require improvement and 5 are inadequate. Another 238 settings across the county have no published grade yet, so they sit outside those counts. Every one of these figures describes Essex as a whole, so it gives the odds of a decent school in the county, not a verdict on the schools a Roydon child would go to.
Roydon Primary Academy is the village's own school, and its original building went up in 1876. The Department for Transport's 2019 model puts the nearest primary about 8 minutes' walk from the average Roydon home. Places are allocated under the council's published admissions rules, though, so living around the corner from the school helps but does not secure a place. The rules for each oversubscribed school show how places were given out in past years, and a parent who reads them for the school they want will know more than one who has only walked past the gate. Over towards Harlow there are more primaries within reach, including Katherines Primary Academy and Nursery, Jerounds Primary Academy and St Luke's Catholic Academy, which gives families a back-up if the village school is full.
Secondary school means a much longer trip. The same 2019 model puts the nearest secondary about 13 minutes away by car, about 25 minutes by public transport and about 43 minutes on foot. A child who could walk to primary in 8 minutes reaches Year 7 and finds out how far away the rest of the education system is. Bus timetables age faster than road distances, so the 25-minute public transport figure is the shakiest of the three.
The schools are one of Roydon's real strengths, with a village primary at the end of the road and a county where good schools are the norm.