Fancy putting the Rightmove School Checker to the test? £300 to be won for feedback NOW CLOSED

[AnnMumsnet]

The team at Rightmove have asked us to find MNers in Great Britain to put their School Checker to the test and we know you all love a bit of property porn so we thought you’d all jump at this one - we’re specifically looking for parents (or parents to be) who have pre-school children who are starting to think about primary school for the first time - or those who are pregnant for the first time (and for whom school choice is on their radar). It doesn’t matter if you’re looking to move in the near future or not.

The team at Rightmove say “Find the right home near the right school with Rightmove’s School Checker. School Checker gives you access to admissions criteria and academic inspection reports for primary and secondary schools across Great Britain. Now on every property, School Checker lets you discover previous admissions areas and Ofsted ratings to easily compare local schools. Visit rightmove.co.uk/schools to learn more.

Once you’ve found the right home, simply click on the ‘School Checker’ tab to find the right school. Available on both desktop,mobile site and apps.”

Check out their video here

If you’d like to take part in this (will be over the next month or so) - please add your details here.

If selected, we will email you but you’d need to visit Rightmove, choose a property and then look at the School Checker tab. Testers will be able to have a play with it. We’d then want you to add your feedback and thoughts on a thread on MN.

All selected testers who share feedback will be entered into a prize draw where one MNer will win a £300 voucher for the store of their choice.

Thanks
MNHQ

Standard Insight T&Cs apply

Bloop.

Ooh i just used this feature loads whilst house hunting! Happy to have a further play.

Very important that the address is accurate and NOT just the centre of the postcode (which it was last time I checked)

I remember looking at this when our next door neighbours had their house up for sale. This was just about the time DS1 didn't get into our local primary school.

The school information on Rightmove at the time seemed to be based on "as the crow flies" distances. Our council use a "closest walking distance" criteria. It'd be interesting to see if their new school finder accounts for this.

I so hate School Checker! I put my property on the market in the summer. I live well within the 'catchment' of a local outstanding school. School checker put my property way outside! By the time it was adjusted (still not correct though) it was a week later. No one who looked the first few days were going to check again. The only large family properties selling in my area are the ones next to schools. We didn't get any offers.

I think this is really useful but just saying "in admissions area" in 2016 is a bit misleading. The admissions criteria differ from school to school, for one it may be have to be your nearest mixed non religious school, for others there may be reserved places for certain villages, others it maybe strictly on distance.

It also does not take into account the factors that fluctuate from year to year (eg bulge class available or 90 houses being built on the school field). I did all this legwork myself when we moved (took hours) but I think putting it out there will be a self fulfilling prophecy: soon we'll all be living in a skyscraper just outside the school gates.

I think it would be useful to have all the schools listed that a child has a fighting chance of getting into (ie including grammars where postcode is in area and superselectives where there is no catchment at all)

I use it all the time already, tbh.
But I am sick of estate agents claiming houses are in catchment for X school, when i know 100% they are not!

Im house hunting at the moment and have been using this to decide what is worth looking at- didnt think that it wouldnt be 100% accurate?

Tiredemma

I'd be wary of assuming its 100% accurate. As I said above, where I live the distance cut off is walking distance rather than as the crow flies, which may be the problem, but even so. If their schoolchecker is based on "as the crow" flies, they should say so.

A house on my road is for sale right now. It's a little further away from the school than my house. In the region of 50 meters further walking distance away. I've just looked at it on Rightmove. Rightmove gives its distance from local primary as 0.5 miles. This may well be correct as the crow flies. But when DS1 didn't get into local primary, the council told me that we lived 0.95 miles away on their walking distance maps. The last child admitted lived 0.88 miles walking distance away.
So someone looking at this house for sale might look at that "0.5 miles from local school" figure, look at the information on distance cut offs published by the council, and mistakenly assume this house is comfortably within the historic admissions limits of local primary.

Plus, the findaschool link below - I looked for information on local school there. It says local school oversubscribed in the year DS1 applied. Correct. BUT the map showing the successful admission area covers the whole of my road. Most, if not all of my road, was actually outside the successful admission area in that year.

So I'd treat this tool with caution.

The findaschool link is on Rightmove in their schoolchecker section. Not below on mumsnet...

I use this a LOT. Definitely!

We have a DC in school but we're moving/selling and would love to see if it's accurate for both old and new properties.

Oh and we also have a preschool DC.

I just had a look as my neighbours house is on the market. The school checker rightly shows that the school my children go to is out of catchment.

This tool isn't accurate at all. It says we're outside the 2016 admissions area for DS's primary when our next door neighbour actually did get a 2016 place (as did kids living further away from the school and out of catchment who don't meet the siblings/ looked after/ SEN criteria which are the only criteria higher than distance from school).

It also says we're outside the admissions area for our first choice high school yet attendance at a feeder school and / or church is a higher criteria for entry than distance from school. We're 2 miles from the school yet kids 10 miles away often get in cos they have attended their feeder village primary.

Rightmove school checker is absolutely rubbish for my area.

Potential buyers from outside the area might rule out properties in my street as rightmove suggests the nearest school is our catchment school but it is actually in another borough altogether. Our catchment school is very highly sought after but rightmove might put people off.

So people saying that they use this a lot - beware, for my area it is wholly inaccurate!

Why focus on primary? When I moved (with primary and pre-nursery DCs) I started with high schools and worked back from there. Bloody glad I did now.

It would be good if you could use the school information as a filter. So would show all 3 beds in admission area for an outstanding school for example. For some, the school is more important than the house.

Well, you can sort by distance from the postcode of the school..

Someone has confused Great Britain and England.

We're known for being relaxed about that up here.

Schools in Scotland are not inspected by Ofsted. They are inspected, but the school checker doesn't appear to link to the report, just an entry in the Good Schools Guide that only lists the address and phone number of the school. I actually remember Rightmove as listings the catchment schools correctly. Maybe I'm wrong.

Think ESPC.com has the option of searching by school catchment, so they're the ones to beat in Scotland.

If I sort by distance from postcode of the school then I already need to have found the school? But if I just wanted to look at houses within a mile of any outstanding school in Surrey, can I do that on right move?

No, you can't.

Don't know about school places but I've just found a bargainous house for sale near me with 68 (yes 68) bedrooms for a mere £30m. Do you think the local schools could accommodate my 67 kids?

I've just had a look in my area and it's not accurate.