Boscastle has a village primary and no secondary, which answers half the question before anyone opens a league table. The primary sits about nine minutes away by car. The nearest secondary is roughly twenty minutes further than that. Across the county, about four in five graded schools are rated good or better. The quality is fine. The distance is the thing that shapes family life here.
Ofsted has published overall effectiveness grades for 120 settings across Cornwall, and 95 of them are good or outstanding, which is roughly four in five. Three hold an outstanding grade, 20 require improvement and 5 are rated inadequate. A further 113 settings in the county carry no published grade at all, either because they are awaiting inspection or because they fall outside the graded regime, and they should not be read as a hidden pile of bad ones. These counts cover the whole of Cornwall rather than Boscastle specifically, which is what happens when a village has one school and a county has hundreds.
A school on your doorstep is not a school you are entitled to. Places are allocated by Cornwall Council against its own admission rules, and in a rural authority where catchments are wide and year groups are small, one busy cohort can change what is available. Anyone buying with a specific school in mind should confirm the position with the council for the actual year of entry, rather than with the estate agent, who has a different set of incentives.
Boscastle Community Primary School is the one that carries the village's name, and it is the school most families here will use, along with those in the smaller settlements inland such as Lesnewth. Journey times to the nearest primary run to about nine minutes by car, 23 by public transport and half an hour on foot. Secondary is the point where the map starts charging rent: about 23 minutes by car, 52 by public transport and roughly an hour and three quarters if anyone is unwise enough to walk it. Buses exist. Buses that suit a school day are a different proposition, and most households solve this with a car and a rota.
The schooling itself is one of the better things about living here, with a county-wide record that is genuinely strong and a primary in the village rather than down a valley road. What it costs is not fees but mileage, and that bill arrives the year your child turns eleven.