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 (
Who's behind this
I'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.
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.
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.
I want to be straightforward about that. I'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.
What I do have is the problem itself. I'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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Tell me and I'll fix it. If a figure looks wrong, or a page gives a misleading impression of a school, I genuinely want to know. It's the fastest way this gets better.