Wallingford's schools are good, and for once the county figures support the reputation. About nine in ten graded schools across the county are good or better. The town has its own infant, junior and primary schools. It also has its own secondary, which most local children go on to. Most families here end up planning around one school, and Wallingford School turns out to be worth planning around.
Oxfordshire has 121 schools with a published Ofsted grade, and 108 of them are rated good or outstanding, which is close to nine in ten. Eleven are outstanding. Ten require improvement and three are inadequate. That is a small minority, but it means a bad grade is still possible. Another 151 settings across the county have not been graded yet, and the lack of a grade says nothing about how good they are. All of these numbers cover the whole county, so they describe the schools a Wallingford family is choosing from, not the town on its own.
Primary school here means one of three in the town. St John's Primary School covers the full primary age range. St Nicholas' Church of England Infants' School and Nursery Class takes the youngest children, and Fir Tree Junior School takes the older ones. Oxfordshire County Council allocates places under its published admissions rules, and a church school can set its own criteria on top, so living near a gate does not get a child through it. Families moving with a child about to finish infant school should ask the council how the move into the junior years works from their particular address. Across the river, Crowmarsh Gifford Church of England School serves the part of town on that side, and Cholsey Primary School and Brightwell-Cum-Sotwell Church of England Primary School cover the villages around.
For secondary, there is one school. Wallingford School takes boys and girls from 11 to 18. It is an academy run by a multi-academy trust, and most children from Fir Tree and St John's go on to it. It also takes pupils from the primaries at Crowmarsh, Brightwell-cum-Sotwell, Cholsey and Warborough, so the catchment reaches well beyond the town. The school grew out of the town's old grammar school, which Walter Bigg paid for in his will in 1659. More than three centuries on, a dead man's bequest is still the only way of funding a school that nobody here has complained about.
Cranford School, Moulsford Preparatory School and The Treehouse School are also within reach and run outside the state system. They give a family an alternative to the state schools, but the town's own schools leave fewer families in need of one.
Schools are one of the best reasons to buy in Wallingford. The state route runs from infant school to sixth form without leaving town, and families who move in expecting a battle over places mostly don't have one.