Guide
School catchment areas and distances
Most schools in England do not have a fixed catchment line. What decides a place is usually how far the last child offered lived, and that changes every year.
Overview
When a school is oversubscribed, the council offers places in order of the school’s admission rules, and distance from home is usually the tie-breaker. The last distance offered on offer day is the closest thing most schools have to a catchment area.
MySchoolHub collects those last-offer distances from the allocation figures councils publish, year by year, and shows them on each school page next to how far your postcode is from the school.
Check your address against a school
Open a school page and enter your postcode in the admissions section. We measure the straight-line distance from your postcode centre and compare it with the last distance offered in recent years: comfortably inside, close to the line, or outside it. Your postcode is never stored.
Schools that fill on faith, selective tests or banding are marked as depending on those rules rather than given a distance verdict.
Distances by council
The catchment distances pages list every school a council publishes figures for, with the last distance offered for each of the latest years and the number of applications per place. Councils are added as their figures are collected.
Catchment areas that are real lines
Some schools do define a catchment or priority area in their admission arrangements, and children living inside it are admitted first. Where a council or school publishes that description we show it on the school page with a link to the source. Always check the arrangements for the year you apply, because they can change.
Now apply it to your own list
Add a postcode and we rank the schools you could reach, weighting progress as heavily as you like.
Common questions
Does MySchoolHub show exact catchment boundaries?
Most schools have no fixed boundary. We show the last distance offered each year, copied from council allocation figures, and your distance from the school. Where a school defines a priority area, we show its published description and link to the source.
Is the last distance offered a guarantee for next year?
No. It moves with sibling numbers, year-group size and demand. Treat addresses close to the line as uncertain, and check several years.
How is my distance measured?
As a straight line from the centre of your postcode to the school. Councils may measure from your front door, and some use walking routes, so their own measurement decides.