Files
school_compare/nextjs-app/app/(frontend)/about/page.tsx
T
TudorandClaude Opus 5 f614414070 feat(about): give the site a named author
The site had no author, no statement of why it exists and nobody
accountable for its numbers, which is most of why it reads as machine
generated.

The page states plainly that its author is not an education expert. The
credibility claim is lived experience — a parent going through primary
admissions — plus stated provenance for every figure, which is true and
cannot be undermined by someone noticing there is no teaching
qualification behind it. First name only: the Person JSON-LD carries no
familyName, worksFor or affiliation, and a test asserts it stays that
way.

The footer gains a fourth column, with a tablet breakpoint so four
columns pair up rather than crushing before the 768px collapse. The nav
is deliberately untouched — its mobile tab bar already carries four
items.

public/brand/tudor.jpg is NOT in this commit. The page references it and
will show a broken image until the photograph is supplied; a stock
portrait would defeat the entire point of the work.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_017YmbBhr8s7GusjDE12hrZM
2026-09-02 16:22:52 +01:00

130 lines
4.8 KiB
TypeScript

import type { Metadata } from 'next';
import Image from 'next/image';
import { absoluteUrl } from '@/lib/site';
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') },
};
export default function AboutPage() {
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 a working knowledge of data, which is what
I do 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 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. Genuinely — if a figure looks wrong, or
a page gives a misleading impression of a school, I 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>
);
}