The schools around Wotton-under-Edge are good, and the county's inspection record is one of the strongest things about the place. Nearly nine in ten graded schools are good or better. A primary is a short walk from most homes. There is one secondary, and it has been teaching the town's children since the Middle Ages. Parents tend to worry less here than in most towns, and they are mostly right to.
Gloucestershire's schools and nurseries hold 136 good-or-better grades out of 156 that Ofsted has published, close to nine in ten. Nine of those are outstanding, 19 require improvement and one is inadequate. Another 95 settings across the county have no published grade yet, because they are new or have not been inspected, and that tells you nothing about their quality. These are county-wide counts, from the Forest of Dean to the Cotswolds, so they describe the county's standard and say nothing about any single school.
The town's primaries include The British School, which opened in 1835, and the Blue Coat CofE Primary School, with Kingswood Primary School and Hillesley Church of England Primary School serving the villages close by. The Department for Transport's 2019 modelling puts the nearest primary about an eight-minute walk from the average home. Places are given out under Gloucestershire County Council's published admissions rules, so living two streets from a school does not secure a place there, though in a town this size the distances work in most families' favour. In a market town on a hillside, the walk to primary school is one of the few journeys that is short.
The secondary is Katharine Lady Berkeley's School, founded as a grammar school in 1384 and now a comprehensive. Its modern building is a little outside the town, on the road to Kingswood. On the same 2019 modelling, the average home is about 27 minutes' walk, 18 minutes by public transport or 10 minutes by car from a secondary. The town's oldest institution is also its longest school run. Families looking at a house on the far side of the escarpment should walk the route at school time and see whether a teenager would walk it twice a day or take the bus.
The schools are one of the town's real strengths. Parents can expect primaries within walking distance and a single secondary that every family in town plans around.