Want to find a good School? Try Rightmove Schoolchecker

[Francesca1234]

We have two village schools near the town that we live in. We live on the edge of town but are in the catchment for village school A. Village School A did not work out for us or 16 other pupils whose parents also pulled them out of the school (due to bullying which the school could not control). Most of these pupils moved to Village School B 4 miles out of the other side of town. Despite our best efforts in complaining to OFSTED village school A got a 'good' and village school B a 'needs improvement. We all think village school B is excellent!

Anyway, a colleague who recently moved to the area was thinking of sending her child to village school A. When I protested she said it was weird because when she was looking at the Rightmove Schoolchecker for the village school A catchment area she could see that most children in the area went to village school B and this had rung alarm bells for her. I thought this was interesting and was worth posting about. Of course I'm not suggesting that rightmove schoolchecker is a foolproof way of finding a school or that it should be the only method used, I just thought it was of interest.

Its utterly useless if you live near an LEA boundary

It may be different in rural areas but in my city LEA, the most popular schools (primary and secondary) are so oversubscribed that living in the catchment area may not be enough. You also need to check the LEA website (there's a section called school finder where you enter your postcode) for how close you needed to live last year to be allocated a place.
If you live close to an LEA boundary the DFE has a database that you can search for all schools close to you.

It shows that children from my road have a high chance of getting into school Y. It doesn't point out that all children from my road at school Y got their place either through siblings (and the first sibling got in up to 10 or more years ago), or got in via appeal. My road is much more likely to get you a place at school X. Though you might get into Z or A on religious grounds.

I always find it interesting that parents who have joined another school very recently then think they know more about assessment, lesson planning, quality of teaching, leadership and management, progress of the children, quality of the curriculum, the outcomes for SEND, PP children and the higher ability children than experienced Ofsted Inspectors do. On what evidence is school excellent OP? How do you know?

Are you advertising Rightmove's school checker? Because the other day on MN someone was advising on a desirable house-buying area based on it, and they would have spent £800k to live in a schools black hole.

Interesting.

Live in an area where most pupils go to one of three outstanding secondary schools. They're actually the three nearest schools to our home.

Wouldn't touch any of them with a barge pole. And my area is a shit heap.

According the that school checker my DC has very little chance of getting into their school and neither do quite a few of their school friends!!!!

It's bloody rubbish for our area! Shows children going to a school from up to 3km away when last distance offered is under 200m. Yes, of course the school roll (which is what RM is based on, rather than on offers made) shows DC living further away - it includes those who outgrew their small house in catchment and moved to a larger one, those who rented for a year or so in catchment and then moved outside, and those further up the school or with older siblings who have moved for secondaries, amongst others. RM also shows huge overlap between several outstanding schools, due to the above being true for each of them, so you could think you'd have a choice of 3 or 4 outstanding schools only to find you're in the black hole in the middle.

Far better to get the LA's admissions/offers data and work from that...

Weird. I've just checked it for a house on our road. It reports that 'many' children go to school A and 'none' to the next nearest school B.

Wonder where my lot actually head off to in the mornings, then?