Whetstone's schools are very good, and the results back that up at both ages. The primaries score well above the expected standard in maths. The one state secondary counted locally posts a strong result at sixteen. Almost every graded school across the borough is good or outstanding. Parents here have less to worry about than they will manage to worry about.
The six mainstream state primaries around here averaged a Key Stage 2 maths score of about 108, comfortably above the level the government sets as the expected standard for an eleven-year-old. The schools families talk about include Queenswell Infant and Nursery School and Queenswell Junior School, which take children right through the primary years between them, and All Saints' Church of England Nursery and Primary School, which carries the postcode in its own name. Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Primary School and St John's Church of England Primary and Nursery School round out a choice that includes faith and non-faith options. Whetstone is supposedly named after a stone soldiers used to sharpen their swords on their way to the Battle of Barnet in 1471. The primaries have kept up the tradition with pencils.
At secondary level there is one mainstream state secondary counted in the area, and its pupils averaged an Attainment 8 score of about 58, a strong figure for the government's measure of results across eight subjects at the end of Year 11. The Totteridge Academy is the nearby secondary on the local list. With one school counted in the area, the choice at eleven comes as a set lunch, and the families who want a menu end up looking across the wider borough.
Ofsted has graded 57 of Barnet's 59 graded schools good or outstanding, almost all of them, with 12 rated outstanding, two rated requires improvement and none rated inadequate. A further 66 settings across the borough hold no published grade yet and sit outside that count. Places at every one of these schools are handed out by Barnet Council's published admissions rules, so a house near a named school buys proximity and nothing more binding, and faith schools such as Sacred Heart and St John's apply their own criteria on top. Ask the council for the distance at which the last place was offered at the school you have in mind over recent years, since that one figure tells a buyer more than a street map. Plenty of parents in Barnet learn the rules in March of the year it matters.
Schools are one of Whetstone's real strengths. A family that can afford the house will find the education is the part of the move that tends to go to plan.