School websites broke me so I built my own. Genius or complete waste of time?

[FindMySchool]

Last year, we had to relocate and finding a school for DD was non-negotiable. We couldn’t move anywhere without the right one lined up.

Cue my wife and me at 10pm every night: 20+ tabs open, spreadsheets, fragmented government websites, overwhelming information, and paywalls for basic info on third-party sites.

“Want to compare schools? £39.99.”
“Want to see them on a map? £60.”
“Want last year’s results? Premium only.”

I actually shouted at my laptop. This is free public data. Why is this so hard?

It took weeks of piecing things together and added huge stress to house hunting.

So I built what I wish existed: FindMySchool.uk, a free site that shows all schools on one map, lets you compare them properly, and includes league tables, exam results, and university success stats. It even works on a phone.

I’d really love honest feedback:

• Was your school search easy or a nightmare?
• What info did you desperately want but couldn’t find?
• Does this solve a real problem or am I wasting my time?
• What would make it genuinely useful for you?

It’s free, no sign-ups, and I’m not selling anything. I just want to know if this is helpful to parents' school search.

Thanks in advance!

I admire the initiative so as someone who works with schools will jump in. Works well for my area and I like the look of it, although I would know where to find the information.

Now take it another step and automate admissions and appeal information/open places or admissions areas and you'd be on to a winner. With AI it shouldn't be too difficult and you'd be doing schools and parents a favour alike.

This must be for England. We just send our child to the local school here in Scotland (excluding Edinburgh).

Not sure if it’s possible because it’s not standardised - but admissions policies, defined postcode catchment areas etc would be great on there. And also the data that shows how many applied, how many people got in on what criteria and whether it’s full (I think that’s on my local authority website) would be amazing.

It would mean that I could see the schools, their performance data etc AND know whether there’s a chance of us getting in.

When I was looking (London, selective) the crucial information was time from my house to the school by public transport. I wanted to filter out anywhere more than an hour away, and that really isn’t much to do with distance in London, it’s to do with railway and tube lines.

It would be good if you can filter by SEN schools.

If you are also able to categorise SEN schools by need you would have a really great resource for SEN parents. Snobe lists different needs for each school but you can’t search by need. It’s really hard to know what is available - LA lists are not up to date so amazingly you find out that schools exist by recommendations from other SEN parents.

All of that info is already available on 'compare schools' https://www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk/

You need to add value over and above the government pages.

The bigges issues are do the schools have spaces? Can I get all my children into the right school for them - so it works logistically for pick ups and drop offs etc etc

You are also missing hugely important things about schools that has nothing to do with data.....one of our local schools is all about giving children extra opportunities, another is all about playing music, another is great for sporting opportunities, another has a fabtastic reputation for supporting SEN....these aren't in the headline performance measures.

I’d have used this when we were moving, I had a spreadsheet. As our choice in where to live was influenced by schools (only looking for average, even that was hard!).

There’s info on here I’ve never seen before - Oxbridge admissions for example.

As with PPs the main thing missing is catchment or distance for last place offered.

Can I pick a town and then a distance from it? Looked like I’d have to pick the county to get an overview of several schools?

Absolute best would be to select where you live/ plan to live, tick if religious or not, then if it could tell you what schools you’d have got into last year. I realise that would be very tricky to set up though.