The schools are good, and the nearest one is at the end of the road. Lanner has a primary with the village's name on it. Across the county, four in five graded settings hold good or better. Secondary is a car journey rather than a walk. Nothing here is winning national prizes, and nothing here needs an escape plan.
Ofsted has published an overall grade for 120 settings across Cornwall, the authority Lanner sits in, and 95 of them hold good or better. That is about 79%, or roughly four in five. Three are rated outstanding, 20 require improvement and five are inadequate. Those counts cover the whole county rather than this village, so they describe the pool a Lanner family is drawing from, not the school at the top of the hill. A further 113 settings carry no published overall grade at all, which means not yet graded under the current arrangements rather than anything sinister, and folding them into the total would be dishonest arithmetic.
Living in Lanner does not buy a place at any particular school. Cornwall Council allocates, distance is one input among several, and the boundaries move. Anyone buying a house on the strength of a specific school should confirm the admissions position for the year they actually need, not the year the estate agent last looked it up.
Lanner Primary School is the one in the village. Within the wider cluster there is Pencoys Primary School, Treleigh Community Primary School, St Day and Carharrack Community School and Illogan School, all in the ring of former mining villages around Redruth, all doing the same job for similar-sized communities. Nine Maidens Alternative Provision Academy covers alternative provision for children the mainstream system has not worked for, which is worth knowing exists and worth hoping you never need.
The Department for Transport's modelled times put the nearest primary at about nine minutes on foot, seven by car and around nine by public transport, which is the kind of number that means the school run is a walk and the car stays where it is. Secondary is a different proposition: roughly 13 minutes by car, about 25 by public transport and around 51 minutes on foot. Those figures date from 2019, and the public transport ones age faster than the car ones as services change, so treat the bus-based times as the optimistic version.
Schooling is one of the genuinely strong things about living here. A primary inside the village, a county record where good or better is the clear norm, and a secondary run that costs a short drive rather than a relocation.