Those paid for websites that rate schools locally when moving house. Any good?

[FreeBritnee]

We’re looking to move and of course part of that is local schools. I’m not looking for the local Ofsted outstanding school, I just want to know the values and ethos (and if my kids will be bullied).

Is it worth paying to sign up to any of these websites? If so which one would be the better choice? Location is East Anglia.

I was briefly signed up to a site called Locrating, you could compare admissions numbers, parent ratings, kids happiness ratings, heat map of where most kids attend from etc. Really interesting data. It was pay monthly and cancel any time, I'd recommend

No, because you can get the same information from the Department for Education website.

I also found Locrating really helpful- yes the data is all (or mostly?) publicly available, but it makes it so much easier to see it all in one go, digest and compare. As pp says, you aren’t tied to a subscription so we used for 2-3 months when narrowing down our search and then cancelled once we knew the landscape.

Also, I wasn’t fixated on ofsted so found some of the additional data points (which aren’t as widely published) really helpful when deciding between two similarly rated schools

Check out www.theguardianschoolsguide.co.Uk Has loads of data points and is free.

I'd be very wary of these services because they all too often omit key information about admissions criteria

Also OP there is no way that a site will be able to tell you how good a school is at living up to its anti-bullying policy or any of its value/ethos statements

Making a short list from the free data (which these sites scrape) and then asking on sites such as MN might be more useful

Most of the information you need is publicly available and can be found here. www.gov.uk/guidance/get-information-about-schools

Thank you. Amazingly I found out masses of information on local schools by talking to someone in the village yesterday who was a retired teacher. Goes to show what you can find out if you go there and chat to people!! I’m now completely sold on the area and I’m just hoping we can find a house 😬

Seems you've found your solution. But for anyone else, I subscribed to Good School Guide when trying to find a fee paying sixth form. I think a good judge of the value is looking up your current school (though of course you have to pay the fee to do that!). I found while some of it was very honest and accurate, the one thing all parents complained about was lack of communication, and they had a quote in there from a parent saying how excellent communication was!

Sounds like you're sorted but just to echo @rollotomassi, Locating is brilliant. I'm a teacher and I subscribed to find a good catchment area to move to and the data is really interesting, especially as haven't been able to visit the schools in person due to covid.

I’d be a little bit careful of taking advice from someone who has school info that could be well out of date. Our local schools are incredibly sought after, but the leadership has changed at two in the last five years and they’ve totally changed in ethos. What was once the least popular is now the most, while people are choosing to leave a school they were selling their kidneys to get into a few years ago due to the management. I’d speak to some current parents if you can.

Sorry- wrong thread