Good, and unusually close together. Four state schools sit within a short walk or a very short drive of the bay. Roughly four in five graded settings across Cornwall are rated good or better. The secondary carries the name of the town next door, because almost everything here does. For a village this size, having infant, junior, primary and secondary education inside the same handful of lanes is the sort of arrangement most rural Cornwall gave up on years ago.
On the published picture, Ofsted has graded 120 settings across Cornwall, of which 95 are good or better. That is roughly four in five, with three rated outstanding, 20 requiring improvement and five inadequate. Those counts cover the whole county rather than Carbis Bay itself, so they describe the weather rather than your particular garden. A further 113 settings in Cornwall hold no published grade at all, either because they are new or because they have not yet been inspected under the current arrangements, and absence of a grade says nothing either way.
Proximity is not admission. The schools nearest your front door are the ones you will hear about at the school gate, not the ones you are entitled to, and Cornwall Council allocates places on its own rules rather than on how nice the walk is. Anyone buying on the strength of a particular school should confirm the current admission arrangements with the council before the offer, not after it. Estate agents describe catchments with a confidence the admissions process does not share.
The local options are straightforward. St Uny Church of England Academy is the primary school that takes the name of Lelant's parish church and serves the quieter, estuary-facing half of this page's area. St Ives Infant School and St Ives Junior School split the early years and the later primary years between them, which means one extra transition for your child and one extra set of uniform rules for you. Secondary education runs through St Ives School, and for most families here that is the answer rather than a choice, because the next realistic alternative is a drive rather than a walk. Modelled journey times from the Department for Transport put a primary school at around seven minutes by car or 13 on foot, and a secondary at about ten minutes driving or 25 walking. Those walking figures are the point. Very few places on this coast can put a secondary school inside half an hour of the doorstep.
Worth knowing: the school stock here has already been through some rationalisation, so the list of what exists today is shorter than the list of what once did. Check what is currently open rather than what a neighbour remembers.
Schools are the strongest card this place holds, and the one that most justifies the prices. A county where four in five graded settings are good or better, delivered within walking distance of the sand, is a genuinely rare combination.