Very good, and the sums involved make sure of it. More than nine in ten schools across the county are rated good or better. A secondary is close by in Effingham. Nothing is a short walk once your child is past primary age. The schools are fine, and the hard part is getting to one.
Surrey County Council's area has 159 schools and settings with a published Ofsted grade, and 147 of them are rated good or outstanding, which is more than nine in every ten. Thirty are outstanding, seven require improvement and five are inadequate. Another 194 settings across Surrey haven't had a graded inspection yet and so carry no grade at all. All of those figures cover the whole county, from the big towns to the smallest village, and none of them describes a particular West Horsley classroom. A county this well inspected leaves parents very little to complain about, though some of them still manage it.
Places are given out under Surrey County Council's published admissions rules, so buying the house nearest a school doesn't buy a place at it. The council's admissions team publishes how far from each school places reached in recent years, and that is worth checking against the address you're looking at, because in villages this spread out the distances get long. Distance also works against parents here. On the Department for Transport's modelled times from 2019, the nearest primary is about 31 minutes' walk away and 11 minutes by car, and the nearest secondary is 73 minutes on foot, 14 by car or 26 by public transport. A 73-minute walk means West Horsley parents end up driving the school run whether they planned to or not.
The local names are a mix. St Lawrence Primary School and The Raleigh School are the primaries closest to the village, and Howard of Effingham School is the nearby secondary, which means families plan around it whether they intended to or not. Elysian is the one that carries the village's own name. Cranmore and Glenesk School are also within reach, and families with options beyond the state system tend to look at them. The Ofsted grades for individual schools change with each inspection, so check the latest report for each school you're considering. About 27% of households here are couples with children, and they get the same map and the same drive as everyone else.
The schools are one of West Horsley's real strengths, and the county they belong to is about as reliable as English schooling gets. The places are easy to admire. The journey to them is the bit that needs planning.