navigating looking for a school

[Jhas]

So DS1 is going to school 2016 but I have just moved to a new and totally unfamiliar area so I am having a look at the local schools of which there are 10 within 3 miles! But i have no clue how to gauge the schools that have become independent. There never seems to be an ofsted report for them, and so i don't know how to compare them to others. does anyone know if there is a comparable scoring system for these schools or similar?

Do you mean academy schools? If so, they are also inspected by Ofsted. If you put the name of the school into Ofsted's search facility this should bring up the school's most recent report.

Sometimes there will be no report showing if the academy is a very recently converted school, as it mightn't have been inspected yet in its new incarnation. There may be a report for the predecessor school which may still be relevant if the school converted to academy status voluntarily. If it was taken over by a 'sponsor' then the report's probably less relevant because the leadership and management may well have changed. If it's a brand new free school your're interested in, then that might be tricky if it's not yet been inspected. Ofsted's data dashboard provides information on how the school compares, performance-wise, to other schools in england and 'similar schools'. That might be of some use.

If you mean independent (as in fee-paying) schools, then the independent inspectorates (ISI, Bridge Schools Trust, OFsted for some indy schools) should have inspected the school.

The best thing to work out first is probably what (state) schools you stand a reasonable chance of getting in to. The local authority (council) will be able to help with information on the effective 'catchment areas' of your local schools and how oversubscribed they tend to be (if at all).