Newton Pop school is very good and has an Outstanding with Ofsted. The teachers are very caring. Most of the local primaries are very good. What gives NP the edge I think is the grounds as they have a large playing field and a far field which is used as a Forest School and each class goes down once a week.
Another consideration is that at NP there is one class for each age group. In smaller schools in the area, there can be shared age group classes. This can be difficult from both a teaching point of view and from a social point of view.
Not all classes in NP are full at the moment so you may get lucky and end up in a small class.
On the down side there has been some reports of bullying recently and some children have left.
Sidmouth Collage has buses from NP and villages up to Colaton Raleigh get free bus passes as Sidmouth is the catchement school (although the buses start from Budleigh I think) Kings also has a bus from NP but it costs £50 a month same for Colyton.
Sidmouth Collage has improved since the last head was brought in 3 years ago for that purpose. He has now left and we have a new head who is looking promising. The results are above average but they get very mixed abilities and stream quite a few subjects.
Some of the extra curricular opportunities offered there are great and really enhance the learning. They have a FB page and you can read their weekly newsletters there.
NP has brownies, church youth groups, drama group. Tipton St John has cubs/scouts. There is loads going on in NP and surrounding villages as the lack of amenities means people organise their own entertainment eg most villages put on a village panto. Some villages have mums meets at the pub (!) and there are community things like Christmas parties for children, bingo, coffee mornings etc.
All in all it's a fantastic place to live :-)