How we get our data

How we work

• Every figure on a school or area page links to the source it came from, with the period it describes (for example the 2024/25 school year) and the edition we read.
• Official statistics (from the Department for Education, Ofsted and the Office for National Statistics) are shown as published. We don't adjust them, estimate missing values or combine them into scores.
• Facts from schools' and councils' own documents (admissions rules, distances, fees) keep a quote: the exact words from the document, which code checks really appear there. We keep an archived copy of each document, so the quote can be checked even if the page changes.
• AI helps us read long documents. It does not decide what is published: every published figure is checked against the source's own words by code, and what code cannot settle is checked by a reviewer or held back.
• The sources and licences page lists every source and the editions behind the current pages.

The school register

Every school's name, type, ages, address, location, website and links to schools it replaced.

Source and licence. The Department for Education's register of schools, Get Information About Schools, under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

How often it is updated. The register is updated daily. We take a fresh copy before each update of the map and these pages, so a change can take a few weeks to reach us.

What we do. We show the open schools in England as the register lists them, and use its location to place each school on the map and in its local authority district.

Limits. A school that has just opened, closed, converted to an academy or changed its name may show its old details until our next update.

Spotted a mistake? Send feedback with the school's name and what has changed.

Exam and test results

Key stage 2 (end of primary: reading, writing and maths), key stage 4 (GCSEs: Attainment 8, Progress 8, English and maths) and key stage 5 (A levels and other post-16 qualifications).

Source and licence. The Department for Education's school performance tables on Explore Education Statistics (and, for earlier years, the Compare School Performance downloads), under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

How often it is updated. Each year's results are published in stages: GCSE results as provisional figures in October, revised in February; A level results provisional in November, revised in February; primary results at school level in December. We load each edition when it is published, and every figure says which edition it is (provisional, revised or final).

What we do. We show the figures as published, for each school year from 2010/11 to the latest, with the latest two years as headlines and earlier years as a trend. The colour of a result places the published figure on a fixed scale (for example Attainment 8 from 40 to 80) so it can be read at a glance; it is not a DfE rating.

Limits. Provisional figures can change when the revised edition comes out. No results were published for 2019/20 and 2020/21 because of the pandemic, and some years' measures changed, so years are not always comparable; Progress 8 was not calculated for 2024/25 or 2025/26, so it shows 2023/24 or earlier. Small schools' figures can be withheld by the DfE. Independent schools' GCSE measures leave out IGCSEs, so they understate many of them; special schools' results are not comparable with mainstream schools' and are not shown as headlines.

Spotted a mistake? Send feedback with the school, the measure and the year.

Ofsted inspections

Inspection dates and outcomes for state schools, and for the independent schools Ofsted inspects.

Source and licence. Ofsted's inspection outcomes data (monthly figures and the annual official statistics) and its data on non-association independent schools, under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

How often it is updated. Ofsted publishes new inspections every month and an annual edition each November. We load the newest edition when we update the map, so a very recent inspection may not show yet.

What we do. Ofsted's grading has changed twice, and we keep the systems apart rather than mix them. Inspections up to August 2024 gave one overall grade (Outstanding, Good, Requires improvement, Inadequate). Inspections from September 2024 to November 2025 gave no overall grade. Report cards, from November 2025, grade several areas separately and have no single grade, so we never turn them into one or add them to the old grades. Independent schools inspected by Ofsted show whether they met the Independent School Standards.

Limits. A grade from several years ago may not describe the school today; the inspection date is always shown. Inspections of a school that a new academy replaced stay with the old school.

Spotted a mistake? Send feedback with the school and the inspection date.

ISI inspections of independent schools

Most independent schools in an association are inspected by the Independent Schools Inspectorate (ISI), not Ofsted.

Source and licence. Each school's latest inspection report on isi.net. ISI's reports are its copyright, so we never publish ISI's wording: we link to the report instead.

How often it is updated. We re-check ISI's website from time to time and pick up newer reports; a report published since our last check will not show yet.

What we do. We match each report to the school (by its DfE number, postcode or website) and summarise ISI's findings — the outcome for each area, its significant strengths and recommended next steps — in short sentences in our own words. An AI model helps write them; code then checks each sentence against the report (it must not copy ISI's wording, add names or numbers that are not there, or say more than the passage), a second check confirms the passage supports it, and a sentence that fails is rewritten or dropped.

Limits. Our sentences are summaries, not ISI's judgement in its own words: read the linked report for the full findings. Only the current inspection framework's routine reports are summarised; a school whose report we could not match with certainty shows only a link to ISI.

Spotted a mistake? Send feedback with the school and the finding.

Pupils: census and ethnicity

Pupil numbers, free school meals, special educational needs, first languages and pupils' ethnic groups.

Source and licence. The Department for Education's January school census, published as Schools, pupils and their characteristics and its special educational needs release, under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

How often it is updated. Once a year, in June, for the census taken that January.

What we do. We show the published counts and shares. For ethnicity, the DfE publishes detailed groups at school level; we add their counts up into the DfE's own main groups (White, Mixed, Asian, Black, other, unclassified) and divide by the number of pupils, rounding as the DfE does. Ethnicity is shown on school pages for information only: it is never used to filter, rank or colour schools.

Limits. The census is a snapshot of one day in January. Where the DfE withholds a figure (to protect small numbers) we show it as withheld, never an estimate.

Spotted a mistake? Send feedback with the school and the figure.

Where pupils go next

The shares of pupils who went on to education, apprenticeships or work after GCSEs and after sixth form, and to university.

Source and licence. The Department for Education's destination measures on Explore Education Statistics, under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

How often it is updated. Once a year, in October. The figures follow pupils for a year after they leave, so the newest figures describe pupils who left about two years earlier.

What we do. We show the published shares for the latest year of leavers, with earlier years as a table.

Limits. Russell Group and Oxford or Cambridge figures were published for leavers up to 2019/20 only. For independent schools the DfE publishes destinations after sixth form only.

Spotted a mistake? Send feedback with the school and the year of leavers.

Applications and offers

How many families applied to a school, how many put it first, and how many offers it made, for Reception and Year 7.

Source and licence. The Department for Education's Primary and secondary school applications and offers, under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

How often it is updated. Once a year, in June, for that September's entry. We hold entry years from 2014.

What we do. We show the published figures and work out applications per place and first preferences per place from them.

Limits. A high number of applications per place means many families listed the school, not that it is hard for your family to get in: that depends on its admission rules and where you live.

Spotted a mistake? Send feedback with the school and the entry year.

Priority areas and furthest distances

Catchment or priority areas, admission rules, and the furthest distance a school offered a place to in past years.

Source and licence. Each school's admissions policy (on its own website or its council's) and the allocation booklets councils publish after offer day. These are the schools' and councils' documents: we quote them, keep an archived copy and link to the original.

How often it is updated. Admissions policies are set each year by the end of February; councils publish their booklets after offer day (1 March for secondary, 16 April for primary). We are adding them school by school, so many schools do not have them yet.

What we do. An AI model helps find the figures in long policies and booklets, and code then checks every one: the quoted words must appear exactly in the archived document, the distance and its unit must be in the quote, and the year must match the page it was printed on. Anything unclear is held back, not published. The "furthest distance" is the distance from the school of the last child offered a place under the distance rule that year, as the council measured it (in a straight line or by walking route, depending on the council). We show it for each entry year the booklet gives.

Limits. A furthest distance describes one year's applicants, not a boundary: it changes every year with the number of applicants, siblings and other priorities, and it is not a promise of a place. Some councils publish it only for some schools or not at all, and a priority-area outline on the map is drawn from the policy and can be approximate at its edges. Always check the current policy with the school and council.

Spotted a mistake? Send feedback with the school, the year and the figure.

Independent school fees

Day and boarding fees for independent schools, as a range for each stage.

Source and licence. Each school's own website: its fees page or fee list. We read pages politely (following each site's robots.txt, one page at a time), keep an archived copy and link to it.

How often it is updated. Once a year, for the coming school year (most schools publish their fees for September in the spring or summer). Every fee shows the school year it is for.

What we do. Most fees are read from the page by fixed rules. Where a page is harder to read — a table in a PDF, or prose — an AI model reads it twice, in two different ways, and a fee is only used when both readings agree. Every published fee is then checked against the school's own words: the quoted text must appear exactly in the archived page and contain the amount, and code checks the term or year, day or boarding, the year groups and the fee year. What the rules and the model cannot settle goes to a reviewer, and code checks the reviewer's answer the same way. We show the full-time tuition fee only: part-time and nursery session prices, lunch, deposits, registration, extras and add-ons such as extra subjects or language support are left out. VAT is shown as the school publishes it (including or excluding VAT). Fees are never ranked.

Limits. A school may change its fees after we read them, or publish them in a way we could not read with certainty, in which case we show none. Bursaries and scholarships can change what a family pays. Independent special schools are not included: their fees are agreed for each placement.

Spotted a mistake? Send feedback with the school and the fee.

Neighbourhoods

The deprivation profile of each district's neighbourhoods, and the shares of homeowners, people with a degree-level qualification and people in higher managerial and professional jobs.

Source and licence. The English Indices of Deprivation 2025 (Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government) and the Census 2021 (Office for National Statistics), both under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Neighbourhood boundaries are the ONS's and contain OS data © Crown copyright and database right.

How often it is updated. Rarely: the Indices of Deprivation are revised every four or five years, the census every ten.

What we do. We group neighbourhoods into fifths of England, and for a district we add up its neighbourhoods' census counts before working out a share (never an average of shares).

Limits. These figures describe the neighbourhoods, not the pupils who go to a school: many pupils live elsewhere. Census figures are from March 2021.

Spotted a mistake? Send feedback with the area and the figure.

School logos

The badge or logo shown at the top of a school page and in the map.

Source and licence. Each school's own website. A logo belongs to its school; we use it only to identify the school, and it does not mean the school endorses School Wisely.

How often it is updated. When we re-read schools' websites. A school that changes its logo may show the old one until then.

What we do. Code and an AI model pick the likely logo from the school's site, and a person checks them; trust logos, award badges and photos are left out. We store a small copy on our own image host.

Limits. Some schools have no logo here because we could not tell their logo apart with confidence.

Spotted a mistake? Send feedback with the school (a school can ask us to remove its logo).

The map

The streets, places and labels under the schools in the map.

Source and licence. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, under the Open Database License, styled by OpenMapTiles and served by OpenFreeMap. Postcode searches use postcodes.io (ONS and OS data under the Open Government Licence).

How often it is updated. OpenStreetMap is edited continuously by volunteers; the map tiles are refreshed by their provider.

What we do. We draw the schools, priority areas and neighbourhood shading on top; the base map is used as it is.

Limits. A new road or estate may be missing. Distances in the map are straight-line distances, which may not be how the council measures them.

Spotted a mistake? Send feedback with where on the map (errors in the base map can also be fixed on OpenStreetMap).

Report an error

If something looks wrong, the source linked next to the figure shows what was published. If we got it wrong, or something is missing, send us feedback. It goes straight to the people building School Wisely, and we correct the data at its source so the fix reaches the map and every page.