How we source, score, label and limit the information on this site. We aim to be conservative and to show uncertainty honestly: missing data is shown as unknown, never guessed.
Ofsted has stopped issuing single-word overall judgements (Outstanding / Good / Requires Improvement / Inadequate). Schools are now graded with a report card across multiple areas on a five-point scale — Exceptional, Strong Standard, Expected Standard, Needs Attention, Urgent Improvement — with safeguarding judged separately as Met / Not met. Ofsted states the old single-word grades are not comparable to the new report-card outcomes.
Any single-word Ofsted grade shown on this site is therefore historical: it reflects a school's last inspection under the previous framework and the date of that inspection is shown alongside it. We do not present these grades as current, and we do not rank or filter schools by them as if they were current, comparable outcomes. As schools are re-inspected under the new framework, we show the report-card areas separately and do not convert them into a single grade.
Our data is drawn from official UK government sources. Each figure reflects the most recent release we have imported; where a figure is older, we label its year. Key sources and the vintage currently reflected:
| Dataset | Source | Notes on currency |
|---|---|---|
| School register, status, type, location | GIAS (Get Information About Schools, DfE) | The canonical key is the URN. Schools recorded as closed are labelled as closed and excluded from rankings. |
| Inspection outcomes | Ofsted | Single-word grades are historical (pre-10-Nov-2025) and shown with their inspection date. See the box above. |
| Pupil characteristics (FSM, EAL, ethnicity) | School Census (DfE, annual) | The demographics shown reflect the labelled census year; FSM may differ from the latest census, which is also shown where available. |
| SEN provision & pupil numbers | School Census / SEN release (DfE) | Where a value is suppressed by DfE for small numbers, we show it as suppressed — not as zero. |
| KS2 / KS4 (Attainment 8, Progress 8) / attendance | DfE Performance Tables | 2019-20, 2020-21 and 2021-22 are COVID-affected and are not used in trend lines. Small cohorts (<11) are suppressed. |
| Admissions / catchment distances | Scraped Local Authority admissions arrangements | Fragmentary and approximate — see the catchment section below. |
| Independent schools | ISC / ISI (partial) | Coverage is partial; some independent schools are unrated or inspected several years ago. |
Each school page may include an AI-generated summary. These are produced by a large language model from the official data above and are clearly labelled as AI-generated. They are a convenience, not an authoritative source.
Where we show a "last distance offered", it is the straight-line distance of the furthest child admitted in a recent year under a school's distance criterion, scraped from that local authority's published admissions data. It is:
Always check the admitting authority's current published arrangements before relying on any distance.
Our composite "score" (0–100) and derived insights (rankings, "improving fastest", percentile badges) are computed from the official data above. We are working to publish the exact formula and weights as part of this transparency commitment. In the meantime:
Inspection and performance data on this site are England-centric. GIAS and Ofsted cover England; Wales is inspected by Estyn and Scotland and Northern Ireland have separate systems. Welsh schools may appear in search but do not carry Ofsted ratings or DfE England performance data and are not scored. Independent-school coverage is partial (via ISC/ISI). We are explicit about these gaps rather than implying complete UK coverage.