school_compare/nextjs-app/app/(frontend)/about/page.tsx

import type { Metadata } from 'next';
import Image from 'next/image';
import { notFound } from 'next/navigation';
import { absoluteUrl } from '@/lib/site';
import { getFlags } from '@/lib/flags';
import { personJsonLd, organizationJsonLd } from '@/lib/jsonld';
import styles from './About.module.css';

export const metadata: Metadata = {
  title: 'About',
  description:
    'Who builds schoolcompare, why it exists, and where its numbers come from.',
  alternates: { canonical: absoluteUrl('/about') },
};

/*
 * Gated on about_page. The default 300s read is the right floor here: this
 * page declares no revalidate of its own, so nothing is lost by it, and a flip
 * lands within five minutes.
 *
 * notFound(), not a redirect: while the flag is dark this URL does not exist,
 * and a 404 is what tells a crawler not to keep it.
 */
export default async function AboutPage() {
  const flags = await getFlags();
  if (flags.about_page !== true) notFound();

  const jsonLd = {
    '@context': 'https://schema.org',
    '@graph': [personJsonLd(), organizationJsonLd()],
  };

  return (
    <div className={styles.page}>
      <script
        type="application/ld+json"
        dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{ __html: JSON.stringify(jsonLd) }}
      />

      <header className={styles.header}>
        <Image
          src="/brand/tudor.jpg"
          alt="Tudor, who builds schoolcompare"
          width={96}
          height={96}
          className={styles.portrait}
          priority
        />
        <div>
          <p className={styles.kicker}>Who&apos;s behind this</p>
          <h1 className={styles.heading}>I&apos;m Tudor. I built this site.</h1>
        </div>
      </header>

      <div className={styles.prose}>
        <p className={styles.lede}>
          I&apos;m a parent in south-west London. When we started looking at
          primary schools, I found the information I needed was all published,
          and almost impossible to hold in one place.
        </p>

        <p>
          SATs results were in one government table. Ofsted judgements were in a
          separate service, in a format that had just changed. Admissions
          distances were buried in council PDFs, a different one per borough,
          each with its own layout. I ended up building a spreadsheet, and then
          I got tired of the spreadsheet.
        </p>

        <p>
          So I built this instead. It pulls the official figures into one place
          and puts them side by side, which is what I wanted and could not find.
        </p>

        <h2 className={styles.subheading}>I&apos;m not an education expert</h2>

        <p>
          I want to be straightforward about that. I&apos;m not a teacher, a
          governor, or an education researcher. I have no qualification that
          makes my opinion about a school worth more than yours.
        </p>

        <p>
          What I do have is the problem itself. I&apos;m going through primary
          admissions right now, and I work with data for a living. That
          combination is enough to take published figures and present them
          honestly. It is not enough to tell you which school is right for your
          child, and this site never tries to.
        </p>

        <h2 className={styles.subheading}>Where the numbers come from</h2>

        <p>
          Everything here is official published data: Key Stage 2 and Key Stage
          4 results and school characteristics from the Department for
          Education, inspection outcomes from Ofsted, and admissions data from
          local authorities. Nothing is estimated, modelled or filled in. Where
          a figure is missing, the page says so rather than showing a guess.
        </p>

        <p>
          This is an independent site. It is not affiliated with the Department
          for Education or with Ofsted, and nobody pays to appear on it or to
          rank higher.
        </p>

        <h2 className={styles.subheading}>What the data can&apos;t tell you</h2>

        <p>
          A school is not its results. The figures here describe one year group,
          on a handful of days, measured in a way that suits national statistics
          rather than your child. A small cohort makes percentages swing wildly.
          In a class of thirty, one pupil is worth more than three points.
          Results say nothing at all about whether a child will be happy
          somewhere.
        </p>

        <p>
          I try to build that honesty into the site rather than just say it
          here. Special schools and pupil referral units are never compared
          against a mainstream national average, because that comparison is
          meaningless and makes good schools look like failing ones. Where a
          number is unreliable, the aim is for the page to tell you before you
          draw a conclusion from it.
        </p>

        <h2 className={styles.subheading}>If something&apos;s wrong</h2>

        <p>
          Tell me and I&apos;ll fix it. If a figure looks wrong, or a page gives
          a misleading impression of a school, I genuinely want to know.
          It&apos;s the fastest way this gets better.
        </p>

        <p>
          <a href="mailto:contact@schoolcompare.co.uk" className={styles.link}>
            contact@schoolcompare.co.uk
          </a>
        </p>
      </div>
    </div>
  );
}