The schools around Thorpe are good, and the county's record backs that up. Nine in ten graded schools across Surrey are good or better. The village has its own primary school, a short walk from most homes. The nearest secondary means a bus or a lift. Primary school is a stroll here, and secondary school is a drive.
Ofsted has graded 159 schools and other settings across Surrey, and 147 of them are good or outstanding, which is just over nine in ten. Thirty hold the top grade of outstanding, seven are rated requires improvement and five are inadequate. These are county-wide counts, so they describe the system Thorpe children are drawn into, and say nothing about any one classroom. Another 194 settings in Surrey have no published overall grade yet, and they sit outside those totals entirely.
Thorpe CofE Aided Primary School carries the village's name, and the village has had a school of its own since its National school days. Places are handed out under Surrey County Council's published admissions rules, and as a church-aided school the village primary sets some of its own criteria, so buying the cottage nearest the gate secures nothing on its own. Read the school's admissions policy for the year you would apply, because faith criteria can rank a family from the next village above the family next door. Department for Transport modelling from 2019 puts the nearest primary about seven minutes' walk away on average, which in a village this size is close to the whole journey.
Thorpe Lea Primary School and Manorcroft Primary School sit towards Egham, and between them and the village school most families have more than one primary within reach. Secondary school is a different trip. The same 2019 modelling puts the nearest secondary about 12 minutes away by car, 28 minutes by public transport and 40 minutes on foot, and the bus times have aged more than the road ones since. Parents of a ten-year-old in Thorpe tend to discover the bus timetable and the school run at the same moment.
The fee-paying side is unusually visible for a village. TASIS England is on Thorpe's doorstep and ACS Egham International School is close by, and the international schools are among the larger employers locally. Thorpe offers a Church of England village primary, an American curriculum and a theme park within a mile or two of each other, which covers most of what a childhood asks for.
Schooling is one of Thorpe's real strengths, built on a county system where good is the norm and a village primary within walking distance. The only hard part arrives at eleven, and it is a transport problem.