About the data
Schools in Reach is a free guide to schools, nurseries and neighbourhoods, built entirely from open government and community data. It starts with the London Borough of Hackney; more areas will follow.
What “in reach” means
Oversubscribed schools usually give places to looked-after children and siblings first, then to children who live closest. The council publishes the furthest distance offered at each school every year, separately for each ability band where banding is used. We compare those cut-offs with your straight-line distance from the postcode you search, or from the pin you drag to your front door.
- Cut-offs are as at National Offer Day (1 March for secondary, mid-April for reception). Waiting lists can move them further out before term starts.
- Councils measure from your home's official address point to the school's measuring point. A postcode centre can be a few hundred feet from your home, so drag the pin for the best estimate.
- Cut-offs change every year with the number and location of applicants. Past years are a guide, not a promise.
- The waiting-list estimate on each school page is a model we calculate, not published data.
Features and where the data comes from
| Feature | Source |
|---|---|
| School register: type, phase, gender, faith, ages, capacity, SEN provision, independent schools | DfE Get Information About Schools |
| Last distance offered, applications and offers by criterion and band | Hackney Education admissions allocation reports |
| Exam results and progress (KS2, GCSE, 16–18), attendance, pupils, workforce, finance, leaver destinations | DfE school performance tables and Explore Education Statistics |
| Ethnicity and class sizes | DfE Schools, pupils and their characteristics |
| Inspections and Parent View | Ofsted management information |
| Nurseries and childcare | Ofsted childcare providers and inspections |
| Neighbourhood deprivation | MHCLG English Indices of Deprivation |
| Neighbourhood profiles: population, housing, qualifications, cars | ONS Census 2021 via Nomis |
| Crime | data.police.uk (queried live for your location) |
| Parks, libraries, GPs and other amenities; base map | © OpenStreetMap contributors |
| Stations | DfT NaPTAN and OpenStreetMap |
| Flood and noise overlays | Environment Agency and Defra map services |
| Postcode lookup | postcodes.io (ONS Postcode Directory) |
What we can't show (yet)
Some commercial sites show where a school's current pupils live, which primary schools feed which secondaries, or which schools children in each street attend. That comes from the National Pupil Database, which DfE only releases to approved organisations under licence, so it isn't open data. We show the council's published cut-offs instead, which set the rules for new applicants.
Licences and attribution
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right. Source: Office for National Statistics licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database Licence.
Privacy
This site sets no cookies and has no user accounts. Your shortlist and last search stay in your own browser. When you search, your postcode goes to postcodes.io to find its location. When you open the Area tab, your approximate coordinates go to data.police.uk to fetch nearby crime. The map is served from this site, so no third-party map server sees your activity.
Disclaimer
Schools in Reach is independent. It isn't affiliated with Hackney Council, Hackney Education, the Department for Education, Ofsted or any school. Always check admissions rules and deadlines with the council and the school before applying.