The School Checker is an information tool that appears within the full property details page of all residential listings, enabling our site users to see the nearest primary and secondary schools to the advertised property, how these schools perform, and the likelihood of being offered a place based on the previous school year’s admission history.


Why is the School Checker useful?

We know that schools play a huge factor in many people’s property moving decisions.


When asked what the most important factors were in determining if a location was right for them, ‘schools’ was the most mentioned factor (RM Consumer survey Q3 2014).


We provide relevant school information to empower people’s decisions around property. We want to help the user understand;

  • What and where are the nearest schools to the property?
  • How good are those nearby schools?
  • How likely is this property to be in the right area for these schools


"Why isn't the latest school information displayed?"

The most likely reason for the delay on Rightmove is that we receive monthly updates. Ofsted update their own records and website very soon following an inspection and with Rightmove receiving updates on a monthly basis, this means that in some cases the rating shown on Rightmove can be a few weeks out of date. 


Nearby Schools List

This list shows schools in order of proximity to the property - it does not indicate the likelihood of attending the school. A query we get quite often is that the school in position number one is not the catchment school. This is not what the list represents, and it is likely that the user has misinterpreted it.

If it is reported that the schools are in the wrong order relating to distance, please bear in mind/check the following:

  • The distance shown from property to school is measured on a straight line basis (as the crow flies), and does not take in to account geographical boundaries or walking routes.
  • Please check that we have the right co-ordinates (latitude and longitude) for the school either by checking on our schools data spreadsheet or asking Location Data. Latitude and longitude co-ords can be checked using a site such as https://gridreferencefinder.com/
  • Check that the address details that the user is expecting to see are the same as those given within the DfE’s database

Check that the school does not operate from two sites. This is becoming more common. In this scenario the school is usually registered under a ‘parent’ site and has one URN in the DfE database, and as a result of this we will only show the parent school location in our schools list (EVEN if the two campuses have separate admissions criteria). At this point we can’t add a location that isn’t registered with its own URN on Edubase.



Is it possible to add additional schools?

Absolutely. To have a school appear in School Checker, the school would need to have a profile with the Department of Education. Once a profile has been set up with them, the school information will be provided to Experian, who will then send it over to us and we will update the School Checker with the schools information.


When a school is reported to us as being missing from our data, before raising to the SAs to pass to Experian it is worth checking a few things first.


Missing school:

  • Has the user expanded the list so that they can see all schools?
  • Has the user made sure that they are on the relevant tab (primary/secondary)?
  • Is the school brand new and does it have a profile with the DfE?
  • It is a split site school? Sometimes these are registered with one URN but operate as two schools.


Misunderstanding the order of the list:

  • It may be that the user has taken the number one school to be the catchment school.
  • They may have misinterpreted the school list as being in order from best performing to worst performing, or most likely to be admitted to least likely to be admitted.



Scottish Schools

The data that Experian receives for Scottish schools is only updated on an annual basis, so it can take some time for school data to update. In some cases, depending on the scenario, it is possible to advise Experian that there has been a change, and they will be able to manually update this. Please raise this to the Support Analysts.



Ofsted/ISI Reports

Ofsted inspects and regulates services that care for children and services providing education and skills for all ages. Alongside the school information we will show the Ofsted report if it is available.

When a school is inspected by Ofsted it is given a rating, which serves as a guide to the school’s performance. A detailed report is also published and can be accessed publicly.

The ratings are as follows:

  1. Outstanding
  2. Good
  3. Requires Improvement
  4. Inadequate (school may also be put on ‘special measures’ if it receives an inadequate rating).

When Ofsted inspects a school, it usually publishes its report publicly around a month after the inspection taking place. It can take around another 4 weeks for this information to be provided to third parties (such as Experian), which means that it can take up to 8 weeks before an updated report reaches Rightmove.

We could receive a report of an out of date Ofsted report which falls in to one of the following scenarios:

  1. The school has only just been inspected by Ofsted, and Ofsted are yet to publish a rating.
  2. Ofsted has updated its own site with the new rating but it is potentially too soon for us to have received the update from Experian (so within 8 weeks)
  3. The report on Rightmove is more than 8 weeks out of date but has been published by Ofsted. If this is the case, we need to raise a query.
  4. The rating is missing completely from Rightmove. This situation usually occurs when the school is yet to be inspected by Ofsted under its current profile and URN. Check the DfE profile and the school’s page on Ofsted’s site to confirm this.  


Academies and Ofsted Ratings

It is quite common for an academy to fall into point 4 of the above. When a school changes to an academy, it is given a new DfE profile and a new URN. The school is legally considered as a ‘new’ school, although the pupils and staff are unlikely to have changed all that much. 

We used to link to the historic school report for the predecessor school, but we don’t do that with Experian’s data. What this means is that occasionally we will get schools with a historic Outstanding or Good rating query why the grade is missing – unsurprisingly it doesn’t tend to happen with historically underperforming schools!

Good to note:

Ofsted only publishes reports during term time, which can sometimes cause a delay from when the school was inspected to when they publish the report on their own website.


What if the information is incorrect?

If the School Checker information is incorrect or different from the Ofsted report, please raise a ticket to the Support Analysts who will contact Experian. Any changes can take about 2 weeks to update.