Good, which is lucky, because there is very little choosing involved. Two state primaries serve the area. One secondary takes everybody afterwards. The results at both ends hold up perfectly well. This is a town where the school run has one destination and the outcomes make that bearable, which is not the same as a town with options.
At primary level there are two mainstream state schools in the area, St Michael's Church of England Primary School in Lyme Regis and Mrs Ethelston's Church of England Primary Academy. Key Stage 2 maths comes in at an average scaled score of about 103 across the two. Both carry a church designation, so the great primary decision most parents agonise over reduces here to which one is easier to reach on a wet Tuesday morning. Nobody is drawing up a shortlist.
Secondary is simpler still. The area has one mainstream state secondary, The Woodroffe School, with an Attainment 8 score of about 51. Every child who stays local goes there, which means the school gets the whole ability range rather than a self-selecting slice of it, and the score is achieved on that basis. Parents who decide it is not for them are not choosing a different bus route. They are choosing a daily drive out of the area, and most conclude fairly quickly that the drive is not worth what it would buy.
The wider inspection record belongs to Dorset as a whole rather than to this town. Ofsted has published grades for 86 settings across the local authority, of which 68 are good or better, so roughly four in five. Two are outstanding, 17 require improvement, and one is inadequate. A further 52 settings hold no published grade at all yet, which means exactly that and nothing more: not inspected, not judged, not evidence of anything either way.
The usual warning applies with more force in a place this small. Naming a school is not the same as securing a place at it. Admission is decided by the local authority's oversubscription rules, and buying a house within sight of a school gate buys the view, not the desk. Anyone moving specifically for one of these schools should confirm the current arrangements with the authority before they exchange, not after the offer letter lands in the spring.
For a town of this size the schools are the part of the offer that needs no apology. What you give up is choice, not quality, and most families here decide that is a fair swap.