The area around a school, and schools like it
Every school page now carries four sections built from sources outside the education statistics: what homes cost nearby, the roads around the school, the Census and deprivation picture of its neighbourhood, and the twelve schools in England with the most similar intake. This guide says exactly how each is built and what it does not tell you.
Coverage
- Schools with a house-price figure
- 21,685
- With prices inside a published cutoff distance
- 4,551
- Schools with twelve matched peers
- 17,238
- England median sale price, January 2024 to July 2026
- £300,000
The one rule that matters
Area figures describe the area, not the pupils. A school in an expensive postcode can draw its intake from a social-housing estate a mile away; a faith or grammar school recruits across a whole borough. Where you want to know about the children in the school, the page gives you the school's own census figures: free school meals, English as an additional language, SEN. The neighbourhood sections answer a different question, the one a family moving house actually asks: what is it like around here?
Common questions
- Do the neighbourhood figures describe the pupils?
- No. They describe the small statistical area the school building stands in: roughly 1,500 residents for the Census and deprivation figures, a 1 km circle for house prices, 500 m for road collisions. Children travel in from further away, and for selective, faith and some other schools usually much further. For the pupils themselves, use the school's own free school meal, EAL and SEN figures higher up the page, which come from the school census.
- Where do the house prices come from?
- HM Land Registry's Price Paid Data: every residential sale in England registered since January 2024, market sales of houses and flats only (no repossessions, right-to-buy or other non-market transfers). Each sale's postcode is located with OS Code-Point Open and we take the sales within 1 km of the school, or 2 km where fewer than ten homes sold within 1 km. Data to July 2026; a sale is registered weeks after it completes, so the latest months are always incomplete. 21,685 schools have enough sales to show a figure.
- What is “inside the cutoff distance”?
- For schools whose council published a last-distance-offered figure measured in a straight line, we also price the homes inside that radius: the addresses that would actually have got a child in that year. 4,551 schools currently have one. A cutoff moves every year with the number of applicants, so it is last year's line, not a boundary.
- How are the road figures counted?
- From the Department for Transport's STATS19 road casualty statistics, every collision reported to the police within 500 m of the school over the last five years. “Child pedestrians” counts casualties aged under 16 on foot. “School-run times” means weekdays between 07:30 and 09:00 or 15:00 and 16:30, outside August. The comparison is with other urban or rural schools because collision counts rise with traffic and density, not with anything the school does. A high count says the school is near a busy road; it is not a safety rating for the school.
- Which deprivation measure is used?
- The English Indices of Deprivation 2025, published by MHCLG in October 2025 on 2021 census geography, which is why our deciles can differ from sites still using the 2019 edition. We show the overall index (IMD) and the Income Deprivation Affecting Children Index (IDACI), which counts only children in low-income families and is the measure closest to the intake a school is likely to draw on. Decile 1 is the most deprived tenth of England, 10 the least.
- How are “schools with a similar intake” chosen?
- From the 17,238 mainstream schools with a headline result, each is matched to the twelve whose intake is closest on six things a school does not choose: size, the share of pupils eligible for free school meals in the last six years, English as an additional language, pupils with an EHC plan, pupils on SEN support, and the IDACI decile of the area the school stands in. Each is standardised so no one factor dominates, and the nearest twelve by straight-line distance in that six-dimensional space are shown. Secondary and all-through schools are matched on Attainment 8, primaries on the share meeting the expected standard in reading, writing and maths. Grammar schools are only matched with grammar schools. Special schools and alternative provision are left out, because the measures were not designed for them.
- Is the peer comparison a ranking?
- No. It answers one narrow question: how does this school's headline result compare with schools teaching a similar intake? “Ahead of” or “behind” means outside a small tolerance either side of the peer median, two Attainment 8 points or three percentage points at key stage 2. Sixth form, faith character, admissions rules, the year group's prior attainment and plain geography all matter and are not in the calculation, so a close match does not make two schools interchangeable.
Sources and licences
HM Land Registry Price Paid Data: Contains HM Land Registry data © Crown copyright and database right 2026. This data is licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Postcodes located with OS Code-Point Open: contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2026; contains Royal Mail data © Royal Mail copyright and database right 2026; contains National Statistics data © Crown copyright and database right 2026. Road casualties: Department for Transport, STATS19 road casualty statistics, Open Government Licence v3.0. Neighbourhood profile: Office for National Statistics, Census 2021, Open Government Licence v3.0. Deprivation: Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, English Indices of Deprivation 2025, Open Government Licence v3.0. School locations and statistical areas: DfE Get Information About Schools. Intake and results: DfE school census and performance tables.