🏫About

Schoolchecker.uk helps families compare state-funded schools in England by postcode district. You can search from home, browse by local council, open an interactive map, and read Ofsted outcomes, attainment, attendance, SEN, admissions pressure, and local context on one page.

The site is a research tool. It brings together figures that already exist on GOV.UK and related open data portals, but presents them in a layout parents told us they wanted: distance from home, phase filters, sortable lists, a shortlist, and a compare table you can download as CSV.

We built School Checker for parents and carers who are moving area, choosing a first school, or weighing up a switch to secondary. You might be comparing three schools on the same road, or schools either side of a postcode boundary. The site is England only and covers state-funded schools listed in GIAS.

Teachers, governors, and journalists use the same pages to sanity-check published statistics. We do not target children directly and we do not run parent reviews or league-table hype.

Start on the homepage with your postcode or a school name, or open Browse areas if you are still exploring councils. Each postcode district page (for example WF2 or N1) lists every school we hold in that outward code.

Add your full home postcode on a district page to see straight-line distances and map pins. Shortlist up to six schools, then open Compare schools for a side-by-side table. When you are ready to apply, leave School Checker and read your local authority admissions booklet. We link to official sources wherever possible.

School identity and addresses come from GIAS (Get Information about Schools). Inspection outcomes come from Ofsted management information. Department for Education releases cover attendance, attainment, pupil characteristics, and SEN. Local context rows (census, crime indicators, house prices, and similar) are labelled by geography on each district page.

We refresh data on a rolling basis through an automated pipeline. Figures can lag the latest government publication, especially after academy conversions or new inspection frameworks. The data updates log shows when sources were last checked. Full detail is in methodology and data sources.

• We do not guarantee admission or imply a postcode is in catchment.
• We do not publish a single “best school” score or neighbourhood rating.
• We do not replace conversations with schools, SEN coordinators, or your council.
• We do not edit government statistics silently. Corrections fix pipeline or display bugs.

Copy on district and council pages is generated from live data so counts stay accurate. Explanatory text is written in plain UK English and updated when DfE or Ofsted change how statistics are published (for example area judgements on newer Ofsted visits).

If a number looks wrong, tell us via contact with the school URN, the field (such as attendance), and a link to the official source if you have one. We prioritise fixes that affect many schools (encoding, missing Ofsted notes, stale URNs after academy conversion).

Schoolchecker.uk is an independent website. We are not part of the Department for Education, Ofsted, or any local council. We are not paid by schools to appear in results. If we add advertising in future, it will follow our privacy policy and Google programme policies, with no ads placed over compare results or admission-sensitive content.

Methodology and data sources explains every metric. Data updates logs pipeline checks. Compare schools shows how shortlisting works. For anything we have not covered, contact is the fastest route.