Ofsted ratings are a snapshot, not a forecast

Ofsted ratings drive an enormous amount of London property decision-making, and they are worth far less than that decision-making assumes.

Not because they are wrong. Because of what they are: a judgement made by a small team over a short visit, about a school as it was on the days they visited, published as a single word that then sits on the record for years.

What the rating actually is

An inspection is a snapshot. Inspectors are in the building for a matter of days. They observe, examine data, talk to staff and pupils, and produce a graded judgement.

The gap between inspections can be long — a school judged strong may not be revisited for years. So a rating you read today can describe a school under a head who has since left, with a staff body that has largely turned over, and a cohort that has entirely changed.

The measure we hold, and its limits

For every London borough we hold the proportion of nearby schools rated Good or Outstanding.

That figure is genuinely useful for one thing: telling you whether an area has a broadly healthy supply of well-regarded schools, or a thin one. It is close to useless for the thing people actually want, which is will my child get into a good school from this address.

Those are different questions, and the gap between them is where most school-related house-hunting goes wrong.

Four things the rating does not tell you

Whether you would get in. This is the big one. Admissions in London are driven by distance criteria and sibling priority, and a popular school's catchment can be a few hundred metres in a bad year. Living near an Outstanding school and being able to attend it are entirely separate facts.

Whether it is good for your child. Ofsted judges a school overall. A school that is strong on structure and results may be exactly wrong for a child who needs something else, and the rating cannot express that.

How it is trending. A Good school on the way up and a Good school on the way down look identical in the rating. Parents at the gate know which is which; the published grade does not say.

What happens after year one. Primary intake is one decision. Secondary transfer from the same address is a completely separate one, with different catchments and different schools in range.

What to do instead

Check the inspection date, then read the actual report. The prose is far more informative than the grade — it says what the school does well and what it was told to fix.

Look at the whole supply, not the best one. The realistic question is not "is there an Outstanding school near here" but "if we do not get our first choice, are the next three acceptable?" An area with several solid schools is a better bet than one with a single exceptional school and nothing behind it.

That is exactly what the borough figure above is good for — and it is worth noticing that it does not line up with the boroughs people assume. Hounslow, Bromley and Ealing lead London on the share of nearby schools rated Good or Outstanding, with Tower Hamlets fourth.

Tower Hamlets is the instructive one. It is not where most people would guess, and it is a useful reminder that school quality does not track house prices, or affluence, or any of the other things a shortlist tends to get built around.

Check admissions distances for the actual schools, from the actual address. Councils publish the furthest distance offered in previous years. This is the number that decides whether the school near you is available to you, and it is the one nobody looks up until it is too late.

Visit. Nothing on paper substitutes for an hour in the building.

The general point

This is the same problem as every other neighbourhood statistic. A borough figure describes a borough. It cannot describe your street, your address, or your child.

We make the same argument about crime rates, about what "good transport links" means, and about green space. Schools are the case where the gap between the published figure and the lived reality is widest, because admissions turn the question from "what is nearby" into "what is available to you specifically".

Use the area figure to build a shortlist. Use catchment distances and a visit to decide.