The schools are a genuine strength here, and there is remarkably little to agonise over. Eight state primaries around the area. One secondary, which settles that argument before it starts. The county's inspection record is solid rather than starry. For once, the decision a family has to make is a small one.
Eight mainstream state primaries serve the area, and their Key Stage 2 maths average score comes in at 105. Kingsbridge Primary School carries the town's name, and the rest are spread through the surrounding villages, among them Loddiswell Primary School, West Alvington Church of England Academy and Malborough with South Huish Church of England Primary School. Choosing between them has less to do with league tables than with which lane you fancy driving down twice a day in February.
There is one mainstream state secondary in the area, Kingsbridge Academy, and its Attainment 8 score is about 50. In most of the country, parents pay a premium for an address that lands inside the right secondary catchment. Around here that premium has nothing to attach itself to, because moving three streets does not change the answer.
Inspection grades come at county level rather than town level, so the fuller picture belongs to Devon as a whole. Ofsted has graded 172 settings across the county, and 138 of them, roughly four in five, hold good or better. Three are outstanding, 31 require improvement and 3 are inadequate. Another 135 settings carry no published grade at all, which means not yet inspected rather than anything worse. Three outstanding grades across a county that size is not something to build a house purchase on. The 138 is the number that matters to a normal family.
None of which guarantees anybody a place. Naming a school is not the same as being offered it, admissions run on published criteria and on how many other families had the identical idea that year, and no address in Kingsbridge comes with an entitlement stapled to it. The offer letter in the spring is the only opinion that ends up counting.
Schools are one of the real strengths of living here. The rarer luxury is how little there is to lose sleep over: a workable set of village primaries, and a single secondary that everyone converges on regardless.