Stevenage's schools are a strong reason to buy here. Nearly nine in ten graded schools across the county are good or better. There are 37 state primaries in the area. Primary maths results are solid. The real decision comes at eleven, when 37 choices shrink to 8.
Primary pupils at the 37 mainstream state primaries in the area average about 105 on the Key Stage 2 maths measure. That spread covers the whole of the New Town, from Bedwell and Shephalbury Park in the older neighbourhoods to Round Diamond and Martins Wood in the later estates. A family moving here with a five-year-old will have more nearby options than at any later point in that child's education.
The 8 mainstream state secondaries in the area average about 50 on Attainment 8, the measure across a pupil's best eight GCSEs. The oldest of them, The Thomas Alleyne Academy, goes back to a free grammar school founded by the rector Thomas Alleyne in 1558 and still uses the original site. Parents who stop reading at the founding date tend to expect a grammar school, but it has been a mixed comprehensive since 1989. The Nobel School and Barclay Academy are among the other options, and North Hertfordshire College has its main campus in Stevenage for students who leave school at sixteen.
Hertfordshire as a whole has 203 schools rated good or better by Ofsted out of 227 with a published grade, close to nine in ten. Forty are outstanding, 21 require improvement and 3 are inadequate. That is an average across the county, which covers a lot of ground, and a child goes to one school, not all of them.
Places are allocated under Hertfordshire County Council's published admissions rules, so buying the house nearest a school you like does not get your child a place there, and the rules for faith schools such as St Nicholas CofE (VA) Primary School weigh things a house cannot buy. The council publishes how far its most recent offers reached for each school, and that distance tells a buyer more than any map of where schools are. Several village primaries just outside Stevenage, including Walkern Primary School and Aston St Mary's Church of England Aided Primary School, also take Stevenage children, so some families do the school run against the commuter traffic. Families in Walkern and Ardeley start with a village primary on the doorstep and do the same arithmetic in the other direction when secondary comes round.
Few things about Stevenage stand up better than its schools. Parents get real choice at primary and a strong county behind it, and the only serious planning comes at the secondary stage.