Schools in Totton are the one thing the town has in bulk. This is a place built for families, and the school map shows it: a thick spread of infant and junior schools feeding a pair of secondaries, with specialist and alternative provision layered on top. Totton does education the traditional way, splitting the little ones into separate infant and junior schools rather than lumping them into one primary and hoping for the best. The two secondaries, Hounsdown School and Testwood School, are where most of the town's teenagers end up. It is coverage first, reputation second, because the numbers to rank them are not the point of this answer.
A caveat worth stating plainly before anyone falls for a house because of the school two streets away: naming a school near a postcode guarantees nothing. Admission runs on catchment rules and available places, not on how close your front door sits to the gate, and a popular year group fills up regardless of your good intentions. Check the actual admissions criteria for the specific school and the specific year before you treat proximity as a promise, because the offer letter does not care how nice the walk is.
For the youngest, the town leans hard on the infant-then-junior model. Calmore runs a separate Calmore Infant School and Calmore Junior School, Foxhills does the same with Foxhills Infant School and Foxhills Junior School, and the pattern repeats out toward the edges with Marchwood Church of England Infant School and Marchwood Junior School. Add in the likes of Eling Infant School and Nursery, Hazel Wood Infant School, Lydlynch Infant School and Abbotswood Junior School, and a family in Totton is rarely short of a primary-age option within reach. It is not a town where you fight for the single school in the village, because there is no single school in the village.
Secondary is a tighter market, as it is almost everywhere. Hounsdown School and Testwood School carry the load once children age out of juniors, which means the choice narrows from a long list to a short one at exactly the point parents start paying attention. Beyond the mainstream, the area also holds specialist and alternative provision, with names like Forest Park School and the New Forest Small School sitting in the mix for children whose needs the ordinary route does not fit. That breadth is genuinely useful, and it is the kind of thing you only notice when you need it.
One honest housekeeping note. Some schools people still mention locally are no longer running, and this answer does not treat a closed or renamed school as a live option, because a name that lingers in conversation is not the same as a set of open gates. If a school is not in the current picture, it is not on the table here, whatever a five-year-old memory or an old sign says.
The verdict is a solid middle. Totton gives you plenty of primary choice and a workable pair of secondaries, which is exactly what a family town should offer and no more, and without the inspection grades in front of you the sensible move is to judge the two or three schools you actually care about on their own terms rather than the town's reputation.