Built on official data, not guesswork.
School Catch joins together a range of official public datasets so a parent can see one clear picture of a school. Here's every source, who publishes it, the licence it's released under and how current the data is.
Official sources only
Catchments come from the Spatial Hub and schools from the government register, never crowd-sourced or scraped from PDFs.
Refreshed on a schedule
Each dataset is reloaded when its publisher releases an update, and the panel shows you which vintage you're looking at.
Open and licensed
Everything is published under the Open Government Licence, so we can show it to you for free, forever.
School information
School register
ScotlandScottish Government SpatialData.gov.scot · Scottish School Roll and Locations
Every school's name, geocoded location, address, phase, roll, teacher numbers, denomination, type and contact details.
Local area & environment
Parks & green space
UKOrdnance Survey · OS Open Greenspace
Parks and open ground within 1km of each school.
Air quality
UKDEFRA · Modelled background maps
Annual-mean PM₂.₅ for the 1km grid cell over each school.
Road safety
UKDepartment for Transport · STATS19
Reported collisions within 1km, scored into a safety tier.
How we put it together
Each school is matched to its catchment polygon from the Spatial Hub. When you enter a postcode we geocode it, then test whether that point sits inside the boundary, the same point-in-polygon check a council admissions team would run.
Local-area context (green space, air quality, road safety and nearby roads) is pre-computed per school from the environmental datasets below, so the detail page is a single fast lookup rather than a live spatial join. Transport draws on the national bus-stop register and rail-station data within walking and short-travel distance.
The dates shown describe the publication each figure was loaded from. They're a guide, not a guarantee. Catchment boundaries can change as councils revise them, so always confirm eligibility with the school or local authority before making decisions.
What to keep in mind
Source update frequency varies
The national School Catchments dataset is published roughly annually, while individual local-authority datasets are updated on their own schedules. The vintage each figure was loaded from is shown per source above.
Some schools are excluded
A small number of schools fall outside the national catchment dataset. Jordanhill primary and secondary catchments, for example, are excluded because Jordanhill is funded directly by the Scottish Government rather than a local authority.
Boundaries can change
Councils revise catchment boundaries from time to time. Always confirm eligibility and placing requests with the school or local authority before making a decision.
See it on the map.
Drop in a postcode and watch every dataset above come together for the schools around you.