The schools around Tadworth are good, and so is nearly everything else in the county. More than nine in ten graded schools come out good or better. Thirty are outstanding. The area has three village primaries of its own. Secondary school means a bus ride or a lift, but the quality holds up when you get there.
Ofsted has given 147 of the 159 graded schools and settings across Surrey a grade of good or better, which is very close to all of them. Thirty of those are outstanding and 117 are good. Seven require improvement and five are inadequate. Another 194 settings have no published grade yet, and they are left out of the count completely. These figures cover all of Surrey, so they describe the county you are buying into and say nothing about the classroom down the road.
Locally, the primaries are the ones that carry the village names. Tadworth Primary School serves the middle of the village, Walton-on-the-Hill Primary School serves the heath side, and Kingswood Primary School serves the east side of the A217. Kingswood has the longest history of the three. A school board for Banstead, Tadworth and Kingswood was formed in 1874, and the following year it opened a joint school for Tadworth and Kingswood, the one now known as Kingswood Primary. Only one of the two villages kept its name on the sign. Surrey County Council hands out places under its published admissions rules, so a house close to a school's gate gets you closer to the queue and no further. In the Department for Transport's modelled times from 2019, the nearest primary is about 14 minutes' walk away on average, which most families with a pushchair can manage.
Secondary school is a different trip. On the same 2019 model, the average journey to the nearest secondary is about 27 minutes by public transport, 12 minutes by car and 39 minutes on foot. No secondary school appears among the area's named schools, so every child here travels out for Year 7. The bus timings are the part of that model most likely to have aged, because the area averages fewer than two buses an hour at peak. Before committing, time the actual morning route from the house you are looking at to the secondary you would put first on the form.
The area also has specialist and independent schools. The Children's Trust School is based at Tadworth Court and teaches children with severe disabilities and acquired brain injuries, and it serves families from well beyond the village. Aberdour Preparatory School is the local independent option for parents who would rather pay fees than go through the admissions process.
Schools are one of Tadworth's real strengths. The primaries are on the doorstep, and across the county very few schools fall below good. The secondary run is the only part that takes some planning.