Better than the town's reputation lets on. Two secondaries sit inside Penzance itself rather than a bus ride away. Primaries are scattered through the surrounding villages, one for practically every place name on the map. Most inspected schools across the wider county carry a good grade or better. The thing most parents worry about here is distance, and distance is the one problem Penzance has already solved.
Ofsted has graded 120 settings across Cornwall, and 95 of them, roughly four in five, are rated good or better. Three hold an outstanding grade, 20 require improvement, and 5 are rated inadequate. Those counts cover the whole local authority, from the Tamar to the far west, so read them as the standard the area is working to rather than a verdict on any one classroom in Penzance. A further 113 settings hold no published overall grade at all, which means not yet inspected under the current arrangements rather than anything sinister.
Grades are also the oldest thing on any school website. An inspection is a snapshot of a particular week with a particular head teacher, and a school that was graded three years ago may have changed its leadership, its intake and its mood since. Use the grade as a starting question, not as the answer.
What a grade absolutely does not do is get your child through the door. Naming a school near a house tells you nothing about admission, because places are allocated on the authority's own criteria and the popular ones fill from the addresses closest to them. Buyers who check the admissions rules before they offer tend to be calm in the spring. Buyers who assume the nearest school is theirs by right find out otherwise in a letter.
For secondary, the choice is Mounts Bay Academy and Humphry Davy School, both in the town, which is a rarer thing in west Cornwall than it sounds. At primary level, Pensans Community Primary School carries the town's Cornish name and sits among the streets it serves, while Alverton Primary School covers the western side of the town. Nancealverne School provides for pupils with special educational needs within the same few miles, so families needing specialist provision are not automatically facing a long daily drive. Beyond those, the primary map spreads out through the villages, with schools in Gulval, Heamoor, Newlyn, Ludgvan and further out towards the moor, each small and each effectively the school for its own place.
That village pattern is the part worth understanding before you buy. In Penzance proper you have genuine choice within walking distance. Move out to the surrounding hamlets and choice narrows to one school and one road to it, which is fine until the school is full or the timings clash with work. Two households on opposite sides of the same parish can have completely different mornings.
Schooling is one of the genuine strengths here, and it is the least dramatic reason people stay. Sort the admissions paperwork early and the rest of it mostly looks after itself.