School league tables
Every year the Department of Education releases performance tables for schools and colleges in England for three stages of learning:
- Primary School (Key Stage 2)
- Secondary School (GCSE and equivalent)
- School and College (Key Stage 5)
So what's different about School Browser?
Two things: being able to zoom to view the performance data at any scale, and browsing by place.
Zoom
Just plotting each school on the map is great at the level of a local neighbourhood, but what if you want to check out a whole city, county, or the whole country? Its hard to get an overview from a pile of overplotted points. School Browser aggregates the performance data for every zoom level so you can get an overview of how schools are doing at any scale of your choosing, from your local area to a nationwide overview.
Browsing by place
Instead of getting you to choose a school, then see where it is (a where is this? questions), School Browser allows you to see how schools vary by place (what's this place like? questions) and then find which schools are there (what is here? questions). This is great for comparing and making decisions such as where in the country, a county, or a city, you might want to move to.
How do I use it?
Maps and colour schemes
Click on one of the school stages from the tabs above (e.g. primary, GCSE) then choose one of the performance measures from the drop down list. The map will show performance from worst (deepest red), through average (neutral colors) to the best (deepest green). Zoom in or out and you'll get more or less detail. Not all schools have performance data for all years, particular post 2010. if we don't have data, the point is shown in grey.
Searching
Search for a place using the box on the left - the map will jump to that place. Search for a specific school using the box on the right - a matching list will display below the search box.
Drilling down
All the views are linked. Click on one of the circles on the map, and the list of schools in that group will show on the right, and the stats plot will update for that group of schools. Click on an individual school from the list and 3 things happen: the map jumps to that school, the stats plot updates to show the performance of that one school, and the school's profile is shown below the map.
What's shown in the stats plot?
Its a timeplot for the performance measure chosen from the drop down box. Higher values are better. The foreground blue line shows the performance for the selected school, or group of schools. The grey lines provide a comparison with National averages: the lower grey line is the 25th percentile (the 'worst' 25% of schools are below this line), the middle grey line is the 50th percentile (an average measure), and the upper grey line is the 75th percentile (the 'best' 25% of schools are above this line).
Not all schools completed all performance measures in all years. If there is no blue line for some or all years, this is why.
Right to reply?
Does this match your opinion of your area or school? These stats were taken from the Department of Education website, but our analysis suggest these tables are neither complete, nor free from errors. Please contact us if you'd like to tell us something.