Good, and close enough to walk to, which is rarer in rural Kent than it should be. Nine in ten of the county's graded schools are rated good or better. The infants and the juniors both carry the town's name. The secondary is in an eighteenth-century mansion. Finding a good school here is easy. Getting a place at one is the hard part.
Ofsted has graded 245 schools across Kent County Council's area, and 221 of them are good or outstanding, which is about nine in ten. That covers the whole county, not Tenterden alone. It takes in 38 schools rated outstanding, 21 that require improvement and 3 rated inadequate. Another 255 settings have no published grade yet. That means they haven't been inspected under the current framework, not that they are failing. The county figure matters because the family deciding between Tenterden and another Kent town is usually weighing the same pool of schools from a different doorstep.
Primary schooling in town is split across two schools. Tenterden Infant School takes the youngest children and Tenterden Church of England Junior School carries them on. The Department for Transport's 2019 modelling puts the nearest primary about 15 minutes' walk away on average, or about 8 minutes by car. In practice the car wins more often than it should, and the school gate on a wet Monday shows it. Rolvenden Primary School, Wittersham Church of England Primary School and St Michael's Church of England Primary School serve the villages around the edge. Families on the outskirts often weigh one of those against the town schools, and it is worth doing that weighing before you buy, not after.
For secondary, the obvious choice is Homewood School and Sixth Form Centre. It is a large mixed, non-selective academy for ages 11 to 18, run from a mansion house built in 1766. The old school hall is now the Sinden Theatre, a venue for the whole town, so the school finally lets the grown-ups use the stage. The same 2019 modelling puts the nearest secondary about 26 minutes' walk away, or about 9 minutes by car, which is why teenagers here develop strong opinions about lifts. Further out, Cranbrook School and the independent Benenden School are part of the wider local choice. For most families, though, Homewood is where the question starts.
A school with the town's name on it guarantees nothing. Places are allocated under Kent's admission rules each year, and living near a school is not the same as getting into it. Check the admission arrangements for the specific school against the specific address before you exchange. Estate agents tend to describe houses as "in the catchment for" schools without mentioning that a catchment isn't a promise.
Several schools in the surrounding area have closed in recent years, and some still turn up in older listings. If a listing names a school as a selling point, check that it is still open before you let it sway you.
Schools are one of Tenterden's real strengths, with good ones close by and a county record behind them. The only thing that can go wrong is buying on the assumption that you'll get a place without checking the admission rules first.