Report
Estate agents price a catchment. This is what 1.8 million house sales and every school result in England actually show — and where the relationship breaks down completely.
3,209 secondary schools.
14,106 primary schools.
The relationship is real but far looser than the estate-agent version implies. Housing cost is a proxy for advantage, and a coarse one — it prices a district, while a school draws on a population.
The clearest evidence is where the two come apart. The schools below sit in the dearest tenth of England for housing and the most deprived fifth for population. Paying the premium buys the postcode, not the intake.
| School | Area | Median home | Deprivation decile |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Royal Ballet SchoolLondon | Richmond upon Thames | £1,566,250 | 2/10 |
| St Anne's & Avondale Park Nursery SchoolLondon | Kensington and Chelsea | £1,470,000 | 2/10 |
| Avondale Park Primary SchoolLondon | Kensington and Chelsea | £1,470,000 | 2/10 |
| Saint Francis of Assisi Catholic Primary SchoolLondon | Kensington and Chelsea | £1,470,000 | 2/10 |
| St Clement and St James CofE Primary SchoolLondon | Kensington and Chelsea | £1,470,000 | 2/10 |
| The Stewart Bilingual SchoolLondon | Kensington and Chelsea | £1,470,000 | 2/10 |
| Ashburnham Community SchoolLondon | Kensington and Chelsea | £1,144,500 | 2/10 |
| Donnington Primary SchoolLondon | Brent | £1,100,000 | 1/10 |
| Newman Catholic CollegeLondon | Brent | £1,100,000 | 2/10 |
| Harris Lowe Academy WillesdenLondon | Brent | £1,100,000 | 1/10 |
| Christ Church Bentinck CofE Primary SchoolLondon | Westminster | £1,070,000 | 2/10 |
| Edward Wilson Primary SchoolLondon | Westminster | £940,000 | 2/10 |
256 schools in England sit in the dearest tenth of postcode sectors and the most deprived fifth of neighbourhoods at once. House prices are a measure of property, not of the families a school teaches.
Computed from the same data the rest of this site serves — the DfE performance tables, the school census, Ofsted inspection outcomes, the Indices of Deprivation 2019, HM Land Registry price paid data and Census 2021. How each figure is calculated.
In the 12 numeric rows displayed in this table, Median home ranges from 940,000 (Edward Wilson Primary SchoolLondon) to 1,566,250 (The Royal Ballet SchoolLondon). The difference is 626,250 in the column's stated units. This summary covers the displayed rows and retains the table's period and scope.