Hello, and congratulations on uncovering these instructions. :-) The maps provided here allow you to view school statistics at national, regional and local levels using hundreds of data fields captured by the UK's Department for Education (DfE), as well as a few analyses added by us. They currently include only schools in England because those in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland publish separate data sets and we haven't got around to analysing those yet.

Use the 'Choose your map' section above to select a data field of interest, and to pick a time period and school type. Each area in the map will be coloured according to the mean value of schools in that area.

Hover your cursor over an area to see its name as well as numerical details, such as sample size and national ranking. Click on an area to zoom in and view smaller constituent areas, or on a neighbouring territory to pan across the country.

Links at the top of the page allow viewing of different kinds of constituent areas – regions, local authorities, parliamentary constituencies and electoral wards – as well as the ability to zoom out and view larger areas. For maps showing the whole of England, there is also a link to switch between ordinary geographical maps and cartograms, which resize each constituent area according to the total number of school pupils.

The 'Show each school' menu allows you to view coloured pins for individual schools, limiting these to just urban, rural or coastal schools if you like. Hover over each pin to see the name of the school and its score on the measure you're viewing. Click on it to go to the full Dashboard for that school. If the map colouring makes the individual schools hard to see then you can turn it off using the 'Colour Map' control. Individual schools are not displayed on cartograms, only on ordinary maps.

Note:

• The legend at the top-right of the map shows the numerical range for the nation as a whole and a detailed definition of the data field you're viewing.
• You can limit the analysis to mainstream schools (ie, omitting those that cater for children with special educational needs, pupil referral units and so on) and/or state schools (ie, omitting private schools) by choosing the appropriate options under the 'School type' menu. Note that data for independent schools is anyway very limited because in most cases they do not have to submit the same level of information that state schools are required to provide.
• A school type of 'Primary' includes all schools with a primary-school function, whether or not they also have a secondary school. Similarly for 'Secondary' and 'Sixth Form'. 'Infant' refers to schools with an upper age limit of 7 or 8 years old, and 'Junior' to those with ages range of 7 or 8 years old to 11 years old.
• Areas appearing in grey have no relevant data. This could be (for example) because there are no applicable schools, or because the data in question weren't captured for that period.
• Three-year averages for 2012-2014 are only displayed if data exists for all three years in question, otherwise they will be greyed out.

The 'Change the colours' section allows you to alter the colour scheme to suit your aesthetic sensibilities, political persuasion or wallpaper: 'Low' and 'High' refer to the colours used to represent low and high values on the numerical scale. 'Null' refers to areas and periods for which there are no data. 'Land' refers to neighbouring territories outside the area currently being viewed and 'Sea' refers to the mainly wet areas outside Great Britain.

Save or share a link to a particular map of interest by using the button at the bottom of this page.

This site is a work in progress. We have taken great care to ensure that the data are correct, but it's always possible that some errors have crept in. If you spot a mistake that you think we might have missed, or have other comments, please write to us at: [email protected].

Further information and pointers are available on the About page.