About the data
Sources, methodology and freshness
Every figure comes from a named official publication, is checked before it goes live, and keeps its academic year and publication date.
How figures get onto EduThistle
- We download the official release and record exactly which file it was (a fingerprint of the file), its publication date and academic year.
- Automated checks look for layout changes, unknown measures, impossible values, schools disappearing and unusually large changes.
- Anything unexpected is held back for a person to review. Nothing is published automatically when checks fail.
- Approved figures go live together. If a problem is found later we can return to the previous version.
We show suppressed and missing figures as they are. We do not estimate, convert or rank figures that the publisher has not produced.