Uxbridge's schools are one of the better reasons to move here, and it is a high bar. Nearly every school Ofsted has graded locally is good or outstanding. The primaries post solid maths results. None of the borough's schools is rated inadequate. Parents here mostly worry about getting a place, not about the quality of the schools once they are in.
At primary level, the six mainstream state primaries in the area average a scaled maths score of about 106 at the end of primary school. Hermitage Primary School and St Andrew's C of E Primary School are both close to the town centre. St Mary's Catholic Primary School runs on church criteria. Whitehall Infant School and Whitehall Junior School split the primary years between two separate schools, so a family there faces a second move at seven before it has to think about secondaries. Cowley St Laurence CofE Primary School serves the canal side to the south.
Secondary results are steady without being spectacular. The three mainstream state secondaries in the area average an Attainment 8 score of about 47. Uxbridge High School is the comprehensive named after the town. Bishopshalt School and Park Academy West London cover the same part of the borough. Older students also have Harrow, Richmond and Uxbridge Colleges, and Brunel University's campus is nearby. Brunel was built on the old Lowe & Shawyer nursery, once the country's largest grower of cut flowers. The chrysanthemums on the borough's coat of arms are its memorial, so in Uxbridge you can study engineering on what used to be a flower field.
Ofsted's grades across Hillingdon are strong. The inspectorate has graded 35 of the borough's 38 rated settings good or outstanding, which leaves very few weak ones. Seven are outstanding, three require improvement and none is inadequate. Another 44 settings have no published grade at all, usually because they are new or have not been inspected yet. That says nothing about how good they are.
Places at all of these schools are given out under Hillingdon Council's published admissions rules. A Catholic or Church of England school may weigh faith alongside distance, so a house that looks close to the gate on a map can still miss out. The council publishes how far its last offers reached in previous years, and that figure is worth more to a buyer than any distance a seller mentions. Families who look it up in advance get fewer surprises when offers arrive in spring.
Schools are one of Uxbridge's clear strengths. The real competition is getting a place, and the teaching itself gives parents little to worry about.