The schools in Lancing are a decent spread with one honest gap, and the gap is the thing buyers most want filled. There is a good range of state primaries across the area. There is a large state secondary that draws from the whole district. There is also an independent school up on the Downs that plays an entirely different game. What there is not, in the record available for this area, is a set of current inspection grades to rank any of them by, so the honest answer opens with a caveat rather than a gold star.
On the state primary side the options include North Lancing Primary School, Seaside Primary School, and The Globe Primary Academy, along with Sompting Village Primary School out on the western edge where Lancing folds into its neighbour. For secondary, the state route is The Sir Robert Woodard Academy, a large mixed comprehensive sitting just inside Sompting that takes pupils from across the surrounding area. That spread is genuinely useful: it means most family addresses have a realistic primary within reach and a clear secondary destination.
Being near one of these schools is not the same as being handed a place at it. Admissions run on catchment and distance rules that move from year to year, and the map that decides your child's place is not the map of which school is nearest your sofa. Popular schools fill from the doorstep outwards, and the household that assumed proximity was enough is the one reading the offer letter with a sinking feeling in March. If a specific school is the reason you are buying, the sensible move is to pull the current admissions criteria for the exact address before you commit, not after the sale has gone through.
Beyond the state system, Lancing College is the independent school on the Downs, joined by Sompting Abbotts School and Springboard Education. These are a fee decision rather than a catchment question, and they answer a different set of worries entirely. Lancing College in particular has never had much trouble being found by the families it is aimed at, and its costs are not something the public data lays out for you here.
The verdict is an honest three out of five. The choice is real, the primaries are sensibly scattered across the area, and the secondary provision is there and sized to take the district. What is missing is the reassurance of a published grade to lean on, so this is a place where you do the reading yourself rather than trust the postcode to have done it for you.