The schools are good, and most of them are somebody else's. Roughly four in five graded settings across the county hold good or better. A primary is a short walk. Secondary school is a car journey, every morning, for seven years. Strong provision, held slightly at arm's length by geography.
Ofsted has graded 172 settings across Devon, and 138 of them, about four in five, sit at good or outstanding. Three are rated outstanding, 31 require improvement, and three are inadequate. Those counts cover the whole county rather than Northam by itself, so they describe the odds a family faces rather than the school they will actually get. A further 135 settings hold no published grade at all, which means not yet inspected rather than quietly failing.
Living near a school gate guarantees nothing. Devon runs its own admissions rules, and distance, siblings and the size of the year group all get considered before anybody's feelings about the street they bought on. Confirm the current admissions position with the county before an offer goes in, because a school that took the neighbours' child three years ago is under no obligation to be consistent about it.
St Margaret's Church of England Junior School borrows the name of the parish church and is the one most people mean by the local school. St Helen's Church of England School covers the other flank, and Appledore School serves the village at the mouth of the Torridge. Secondary means leaving the town: Bideford College and Atlantic Academy are the nearest options, with Kingsley School as the fee-paying route for households who would rather write a cheque than take their chances on an allocation letter. The rest are village primaries scattered through the surrounding parishes, doing what village primaries do. On Department for Transport modelling from 2019, a primary school sits about 10 minutes' walk away, while the nearest secondary is about 12 minutes by car, about 32 by public transport, and about 46 on foot for anyone who fancies testing a teenager's commitment.
The schools are the strongest thing this area has going for it, so long as somebody in the house is prepared to become a driver the year the eldest turns eleven.