How we compare schools
What you can compare fairly, what you cannot, and what we do about it.
Some school facts are measured the same way all over England. You can compare those between any two schools. Other facts are decided by each local council. If you compare those across a council border, you are comparing two different things. This page shows you which is which.
The same for every school in England
These come from one national set of data, with one meaning, used the same way everywhere. You can compare them between any two schools in England.
| What it is | What we use |
|---|---|
| Who applied, and who got a place | Numbers the Department for Education collects from every school. We show first preferences per place. That means: how many families put the school first, for each place it gave out. |
| How many families want a school | We show where a school sits in a line-up of all the schools that take children at the same age, in the same year. Saying "higher than 8 out of 10 schools" is a fact. A made-up score out of 100 would just be our opinion. |
| Ofsted | Ofsted's own monthly list. Ofsted has changed the way it grades schools more than once, so we always say which set of rules was used. |
| Exam results | Department for Education results for GCSEs and for tests at the end of primary school. We show the figure for the whole year group only. |
| Teachers leaving | The School Workforce Census, counted in full-time jobs. |
Decided by each council
These really are different from one council to the next. We show what the council published, we say which council said it, and we never change one into the other.
| What it is | Why you cannot compare it |
|---|---|
| Catchment areas | Some councils draw a map showing which streets belong to which school. Others do not draw one at all, and give places to whoever lives nearest. If we show no map for a school, that does not mean you live outside its area. It means nobody has published a map we can read. |
| How places were shared out | When a school runs out of places, one rule decides who gets the last one. It might be living in the catchment, living close by, having a brother or sister there, going to a church, or drawing lots. Each council picks its own rules. |
| How far the last place reached | Some councils publish how far away the last child lived who got a place. We cannot work this out ourselves. It comes from where real children live, and only the council knows that. |
| How distance is measured | Some councils measure in a straight line. Others measure along the roads you would walk. The same number can mean two different distances, so we write down which one was used and never compare one with the other. |
Rules we follow everywhere
- A blank is not a nought.
- When a group of children is very small, the government hides the number so that nobody can work out who they are. We show a dash. A dash never means zero.
- The whole year group, not one part of it.
- Results get published in lots of slices: boys and girls, richer and poorer, and more. We only show the whole year group. Comparing one school's slice with another school's whole year group would give you the wrong idea.
- An estimate comes with its range.
- Some scores are worked out from a small number of pupils, so they come with a range showing how sure we can be. If that range crosses the middle, the school is not clearly above or below average. We will not pretend it is.
- Teacher numbers count jobs, not people.
- A teacher who works half the week counts as half. So these numbers are not a headcount of the people in the staff room.
- A postcode is not a house.
- We place an address at the middle of its postcode. If that middle point is within 50 metres of a boundary line, we say so, because your actual house could be on the other side of it.
- You can be in more than one catchment.
- Some areas overlap. This happens a lot with church school areas, because they follow parish borders instead of fitting neatly together. Where areas overlap, we name the others.
- We report. We do not predict.
- Nothing here works out whether your child will get a place. Wanting is not the same as getting in. A school can be very popular and still have room for every child who lives in its catchment.
When we are not sure, we say so
Some things need a person to look at them and decide. An area map might be joined to the wrong school. A published number might not add up. A school's map pin might not match its own postcode. We keep a list of these and work through them. We do not publish them as if they were settled. Anything still being checked is marked on the page it affects.
What data we hold · Found something wrong? Tell us.