The schools are one of the few things about Pool that nobody needs to defend. The secondary carrying the town's name sits inside the town rather than a bus ride away. A primary is about ten minutes on foot. Across the county, close to four in five graded settings come out good or better. On schools, the dull answer and the true answer are the same answer.
Ofsted has graded 120 settings across Cornwall, and 95 of those are good or better, which is roughly four in five. Three hold an outstanding grade, so that particular badge is not exactly being handed out at the door. Twenty require improvement and five are rated inadequate. Another 113 settings carry no published grade at all, either too new or not yet inspected, and an ungraded school is not the same thing as a weak one. All of these counts cover Cornwall as a whole rather than the streets around Pool, so treat them as the weather rather than the forecast for one school gate.
Naming a school is not the same as getting a place in it. The local authority allocates admissions, and nothing here comes stapled to a postcode. Anyone buying on the strength of one particular school should check that school's own current arrangements before the offer goes in, not after.
The obvious secondary is Pool Academy, which has the advantage of being where the town is. Camborne Science and International Academy and Redruth School sit either side, which gives parents here something most Cornish families do not have: three secondaries in genuine reach rather than one and a hope. Treloweth Community Primary School is among the closest primaries, with the rest spread through the surrounding villages and the two town centres. Curnow School provides specialist education locally, which matters enormously to the families who need it and is invisible to everybody else until they do.
The distances are the quietly impressive part. Department for Transport modelling from 2019 puts a primary school about 11 minutes' walk from here and a secondary about 12, or roughly 7 minutes by car in either case. Walking to secondary school is not a thing most of Cornwall can offer without a timetable, a car park and a running argument about who does the drop-off.
Schools are one of Pool's genuine strengths, and for a place that gets written off on other grounds, the choice on the doorstep is better than the town's reputation would ever suggest.