How do I find out how good schools are - thinking of moving and it will be a key factor

[mascaraohara]

DD currently goes to the local primary school which is a average/slightly above average school.. nothing amazing but dd is happy and I like the environment

I am going to be moving at somepoint and want to get an equal or better school but how do I find out how good each potential school in and is it possible to comapre them directly to another local school?

I'll be moving to another village but there are several to choose from so the schools will play a big factor in helping me make up my mind..

Obviously I will go and see each school but prior to that I want to narrow down the areas I am looking in

I would imagine that all village primaries would be at least OK.
Look forward and worry about secondary catchment, not primary.

Ok, so how do I find out what school is in what catchment area?

I think I must be missing something obvious as people move all the time.. do I find out what council the village belongs to and then look on there website?

ask the estate agent! they ought to know which coucil area is in for council tax info. if the school is particularly sought after they will be only too keen to tell you!

Oh, do you not look at schools etc until you are at estate agent stage? I was hoping to use schools as a criteria of narrowing down the search.. the villages are spread for miles across various borders so would mean copious amounts of estate agents and I've not decided what to do with mine yet.. I need to decide that before I know what my budget it I need ot know that before I can go to estate agent - I'm so lazy I'll probably never move.. it seems a lot of hassle

This could be very obvious but the OFSTED website would be the first port of call. Find some local postcodes and search on the OFSTED site.
Catchments are fluid things depending on how many children meet each criteria. For example if the school was a church school with church attendance as perhaps the first criteria for admissions and one year happened to have lots of applicants for church goers then there would be fewer spaces for the non-church going children and the catchment would 'shrink' that year. Or in another example a lot of siblings one year might mean someone 3 miles away doesn't get a place when they might have the year before. The local LEA admissions office can give you a rough picture for that school's normal pattern but can't guarantee any catchment as such.

I found my current house by starting with schools. Very rough area in mind. Read lots of OFSTEDs. Selected 2-3 schools and based estate agent searches around those.

Trying to search ofsted for dd's current school and it just shows me there are no results in the entire county that i live in. I must be doing something wrrong

That seems unlikely unless the school is absolutely brand new. Make sure you have selected primary school - which sounds daft but it's easy to not do that as the default option is childminder or something. Were you searching for 'new reports' perhaps?

We selected the area we wanted to move to and then plonked ourselves in the Admissions Department of the council with a map and plotted all of the catchment areas including school names onto the map.

Then took the map home and looked at Ofsteds on the Web and League Tables. Made our choice from there but interestingly compromised on the primary (which we are now having second thoughts about having 2 of our 3 go through it) but got an "outstanding" secondary.

Ring up the LEA and ask them about the catchment areas of secondary schools or call in and ask to see a map.
Get a list of schools and they should all have a website-download their prospectus or read it on line. Read the OFSTED-I think with the new type they are down to one every 3 yrs now.

Most schools do not have "fixed" catchment areas - if you go to the school info on the appropriate local authority website, you can usually find a list of the schools and the furthest distance from school that pupils were offered a place from. Church schools and selective schools will have different admission criteria