The schools are good, and the town's only secondary is selective. Nine in ten graded schools across Kent are good or better. Cranbrook's grammar school dates back to the Tudors. The town's comprehensive has closed. The schools are excellent for any child who passes the test, and a longer bus ride for any child who doesn't.
Ofsted has graded 245 schools and settings across Kent, and 221 of them are good or outstanding, which is roughly nine in ten. Those figures cover the whole county, not only Cranbrook and its villages, so they tell you about the system your child will be allocated through rather than the classroom down the road. Within that, 38 are outstanding, 21 require improvement and 3 are inadequate. Another 255 settings have no published grade yet, which says nothing either way about them. Kent's odds are good. The admissions paperwork is where parents find out whether the odds apply to them.
Naming a school on this page doesn't buy you a place at it. Admissions run on each school's own criteria, and for church schools and selective schools those criteria go well beyond how close you live. Buying the house nearest the gate and assuming the rest will follow is a plan the allocation letter tends to correct in the spring. Check the admissions policy of each school you want before you check the kitchen.
Cranbrook School is the one that defines the town. It's a voluntary-aided grammar founded in 1518, and it has an observatory named after an alumnus who became a NASA astronaut, which gives the careers talk a fairly high ceiling. It is also selective, and it starts at thirteen rather than eleven. The town's non-selective secondary closed in 2022, so a child who doesn't get a grammar place travels for their secondary education. The typical journey to a secondary school is about 30 minutes by public transport and about 14 by car, against a 72-minute walk that nobody's teenager will be doing twice a day.
Primary is a more local affair. Cranbrook Church of England Primary School is in the town itself, with Colliers Green Church of England Primary School to the north-west and Sissinghurst Voluntary Aided Church of England Primary School a short hop away, and the surrounding villages each have their own. The typical walk to a primary is about 17 minutes, or about 8 by car, which counts as close in a place where most things aren't.
The independent sector is unusually thick on the ground for a town this size. The Dulwich School Cranbrook sits east of town, a legacy of a London prep school evacuated here during the Second World War that never quite went home. Benenden School is nearby too. Between the grammar, the church primaries and the private schools, Cranbrook has an option for most parents, though not necessarily one for most budgets.
Schools are one of Cranbrook's real strengths. The one thing parents need to plan around is what happens if the grammar school's answer is no.