About

Compare My School is an independent reference site for comparing state-funded primary and secondary schools across England. We publish every school's KS2 SATs and KS4 GCSE results in a clean, searchable format, alongside Ofsted judgements, neighbourhood context, and demographic data, on a single page per school.

Who built this, and why

My name is Richard Chater, and I built Compare My School. I'm a new dad, and for a long time I've lived in and loved a very urban area — close to great restaurants, plenty to do, and the convenience of good work options. But now that I have a child, I'd like them to grow up somewhere a little closer to nature, and that has set me comparing different places we might move to.

What I really wanted was a town or village with a great set of schools — but you don't know what you don't know, and it turned out to be surprisingly hard to know where to even start. I'm a big statistics nerd, yet after spending weeks and months pulling together individual pieces of data scattered across different corners of government sources, I decided to build the tool I wished already existed: one that lets you compare schools more easily, and more objectively. That tool became this site.

How this differs from the government's own service

The official picture of a school is spread across three government services: the DfE's Compare School Performance service for results, Ofsted's website for inspection grades, and Get Information about Schools for the basic details. Those are the primary sources, and we link to all three from every school page so you can check the original record. What they don't do is bring the three together, or make one school easy to weigh against another. Closing that gap is the reason this site exists.

In practice, here is what we add on top of the raw official data:

• One page instead of three services. Results, the latest Ofsted judgement, and the school's address, size and demographics all sit together, so you don't have to cross-reference three websites to build a picture of one school.
• A single 0–100 score. The official tables list each measure separately and leave you to judge how they add up. We combine the main KS2 or KS4 measures into one score, so you can scan a list and see roughly where a school sits before opening it to read the figures behind that number.
• Genuine side-by-side comparison. Pick two or three schools and read their results, demographics and Ofsted grades next to each other on one screen, rather than opening a separate tab for each.
• The schools nearest you. Every school page lists the closest schools by distance with their scores, so you can see the realistic alternatives for an address instead of looking each one up by hand.
• Filters that match how families actually compare. Hide schools where fewer than 11 children sat the tests (the DfE's own reliability threshold), or hide selective grammar schools, and the rankings renumber to suit.
• No account and nothing to download. The site reads properly on a phone, with no login and no spreadsheet to wrangle.

We don't claim to replace the official services. For anything that carries real weight, such as an admissions decision or a formal appeal, you should rely on the source, which is why we link to it on every page.

What you'll find here

For every state-funded school in England (around 22,000 of them), we publish a page with:

• Headline KS2 SATs results (Reading, Writing and Maths) for primaries, or KS4 GCSE results (Attainment 8, Progress 8, EBacc) for secondaries.
• A composite score (0–100) that summarises performance for at-a-glance comparison.
• The latest Ofsted judgement, broken down by category (Quality of education, Behaviour, Leadership, Safeguarding, and more).
• National, regional, and local-authority rank.
• A "compare side-by-side" tool for picking between two or three schools.
• Pupil demographics: number on roll, % FSM ever-6, % EAL, age range, religious character.

Where the data comes from

All school performance data is sourced from the Department for Education's published Performance Tables and the Get Information about Schools (GIAS) register, under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Ofsted judgements come from Ofsted's monthly Management Information dataset, also published under OGL v3.0.

We refresh DfE performance data annually (DfE typically publishes in October–December). Ofsted data is refreshed monthly. The "last updated" date at the foot of every page tells you when this site last pulled fresh data.

Our editorial stance

We present the official data as cleanly and honestly as we can. We do not editorialise individual schools or rank them on subjective measures — every number on the site comes from the published DfE or Ofsted feed, and we explain on the Methodology page exactly how composite scores and rankings are calculated.

League-table position is one signal among many. We strongly encourage parents to visit any school in person, read the most recent Ofsted report in full, and talk to current parents before making a decision. The data here is a starting point, not a verdict.

About us

This site is built and operated independently by Richard Chater — one individual, not a company. It is not affiliated with the Department for Education, Ofsted, or any local authority. We have no commercial relationship with any school, multi-academy trust, or admissions consultancy.

Spotted an error or have a question? See our Contact page.