A useful tool for comparing schools in your area

[MrsJamin]

A friend shared this with me home.rm.com/schoolfinder/ and I am really impressed at the level of information with which you can compare schools. Thought it might be of interest to others...

Thank you for that. I found it really interesting having just moved my children from one school to another it confirmed my decision.

Interestingly, the one that my DD goes to isn't on there. The one she is going to is. Disappointingly, it has gone from outstanding to satisfactory .
Oh well, we are committed now.

Would be very interesting except when I put my own postcode in and asked for stateschools, it found me 10. Great but only ONE of those 10 will actually take a child from my area ( catchment). The others cannot. Half of them were in a different Local authority. So what is the point?

Oh and the information is spin. I know the school and the reality is far from what the site says.

I think that it has a place- it is a huge shortcut to doing all the work yourself and I would use it for the first search. You still have to visit on a normal working day and ask all your own questions. It is a good idea.

I don't quite know how useful the average point score per pupil is. I looked up local schools, the one I wouldn't want my kids going to came up as second nearest of the state school, it also had a higher point score than the school DC go to. But when you look further at the figures, they are in all ways inferior to DCs school (even achievement of the brightest).

Isn't it just the broad brush stroke info copied over from the much MORE detailed Dept For education Schools and Stats pages here? Which you can also serach by map.

And I agree, just because a certain % in your local area go there is no indication at all as to whether you can get in from your address!

A useful intro to a schools search, I would say.

aaargh - and the advanced search thing doesn't work properly. I can't find the nearest 20 state non-faith co-ed secondaries -it keeps reverting to private.

Utterly fed up with it now!

I don't think it is useful for my area of London. It shows schools by straight line distance whereas our local schools use walking routes as admissions criteria, I can't get it to show me the logical 'next choice school' by travel routes on the same page, as the advanced search doesn't work, it doesn't show catchment distances for recent years. In Inner London, 50 metres by walking route makes all the difference to catchments.

According to the data on my dc's school, there is no-one from my local area there. How does that work? 2 come from my house alone and we've been here for 13 years, 2 more within a quarter of a mile at least 3 from the other end of town too.

It certanily shows the stark difference between the state and private schools around here.

It's also out of date - it shows the latest Ofsted inspection date for DS's new school as Oct 10. It's actually Feb 12. It makes a significant difference as it came out of Special Measures in Feb 12.

It also selects your LEA by your postcode - which is fine but the LEA boundary is 100 yards from my house so it misses out DCs school and two others not far away.