Home › About

About London School Directory

An independent, free directory of every state school in London. Built by a Londoner. Funded by no one. Accountable to readers.

What this site is

London School Directory is a free, public-interest resource covering all 3,196 state schools in the 33 London boroughs. We pull together open data from the Department for Education, Ofsted, the Metropolitan Police and other public bodies so that London parents can make better-informed decisions about Reception, Year 7 and secondary transfer.

We are not a comparison site, not a lead generator, and not affiliated with any school, multi-academy trust, local authority or commercial property platform. Every school in London is listed equally and ranked using the same transparent methodology.

Who builds it

The directory is built and maintained by Thierry, an independent developer based in London. The site is hosted on Vercel, with all data pipelines and source code published openly on GitHub. We welcome corrections, contributions and challenge from the public.

Our principles

Open data, openly cited. Every metric on every page links back to its source. If we cannot cite it, we do not publish it.

Monthly refresh. The site rebuilds from source data on the 15th of every month, with a public record of every refresh on our GitHub repository.

Equal listing for every school. Ranking is determined by transparent rules in our methodology, not by who pays. No school can pay to rank higher.

Right of reply. Any school featured on the site can request a correction or post a verified response to information we publish. We respond within 5 working days.

Public corrections log. Every correction we make is logged publicly with date, page and change made.

No tracking we wouldn't be comfortable seeing on a public-sector site. We use privacy-respecting analytics, no third-party advertising trackers, and no remarketing.

How we make money

Today, we don't. The site costs roughly £20/month in hosting and is built in spare time. Over time we expect to introduce a small number of clearly-labelled features — a "claimed listing" tier for schools that wish to edit their own descriptions and post open days; and licensed data feeds for partners such as property portals. Anything that affects what appears on a public-facing page will be clearly disclosed on the page itself.

We will never accept payment to alter a ranking, hide a piece of information, or take a school out of the directory.

What we are not

We are not an alternative to Ofsted. We are not a substitute for visiting a school. Ratings and performance data are useful but partial signals — they reflect inspections and tests that happened in the past, not the day-to-day experience of a child or family today. We strongly encourage every parent to visit shortlisted schools in person before applying.

Contact

For corrections, partnership enquiries, or press: thierrysw11@gmail.com. We aim to reply within 2 working days.

Last updated: May 2026.