The schools are the best thing about Wallington, by a distance. Nearly every graded school in the borough is good or better. All three local secondaries are grammar schools. The primaries post strong maths results. The schools here are excellent; getting a child into the right one is the hard part.
Around Wallington there are 7 mainstream state primaries, and their pupils averaged about 107 in the maths test at the end of primary school. Wallington Primary Academy carries the town's name, and Bandon Hill Primary School and High View Primary School serve the streets nearby. For plenty of families, though, the primary years work as a long run-up to a different test entirely.
The 3 mainstream state secondaries in the area averaged an Attainment 8 score of about 82, weighted by pupil numbers. All three are selective: Wallington County Grammar School, opened in 1927 on London Road near Beddington Park; Wallington High School for Girls, founded in 1888 by a collective of nuns; and Wilson's School. A town whose every secondary sets an entrance test is a town where the ten-year-olds have revision timetables. The girls' school was started by nuns and is now fought over by parents.
Across the London Borough of Sutton, which is the area Ofsted's figures here cover, 27 of the 28 graded schools are rated good or better, close to all of them. Nine are outstanding, one requires improvement and none is inadequate. Another 25 settings in the borough hold no published grade yet.
Places at every school are allocated by the council's published admissions rules, and the grammar schools add their own selection tests on top, so buying a house next to one of them secures the walk and nothing else. Read Sutton council's admissions criteria for the primaries, and each grammar school's test arrangements for the secondaries, well ahead of any move. Parents who skip that step tend to learn about entrance exams from other parents at the school gate.
Schools are one of Wallington's real strengths: the quality is there almost everywhere, and the only contest is who gets in.