Schools in England

I’ve just added data on schools in England to the {blimey} package. The raw data were obtained from gov.uk.

Load the Package

If you haven’t installed the package, then grab it from GitHub.

devtools::install_github("datawookie/blimey")

Load the package.

library(blimey)

Schools Data

The schools data are in the schools package variable. Let’s take a look at the first few records and pick out some interesting fields.

schools %>% head() %>% select(school_id, school_name, age_min, age_max, gender, rating)

# A tibble: 6 × 6
  school_id school_name                     age_min age_max gender rating     
      <dbl> <chr>                             <int>   <int> <fct>  <ord>      
1    100000 The Aldgate School                    3      11 mixed  outstanding
2    100001 City of London School for Girls       7      18 girls  <NA>       
3    100002 St Paul's Cathedral School            4      13 mixed  <NA>       
4    100003 City of London School                10      18 boys   <NA>       
5    100008 Argyle Primary School                 3      11 mixed  good       
6    100009 West Hampstead Primary School         3      11 mixed  good       

School Locations

The spatial distribution of schools can be examined by looking at the postal code and linking to local authorities.

schools %>%
  inner_join(local_authority) %>%
  select(school_name, local_authority_name, postcode)

# A tibble: 26,166 × 3
   school_name                     local_authority_name postcode
   <chr>                           <chr>                <chr>   
 1 The Aldgate School              City of London       EC3A 5DE
 2 City of London School for Girls City of London       EC2Y 8BB
 3 St Paul's Cathedral School      City of London       EC4M 9AD
 4 City of London School           City of London       EC4V 3AL
 5 Argyle Primary School           Camden               WC1H 9EG
 6 West Hampstead Primary School   Camden               NW6 1QL 
 7 Brecknock Primary School        Camden               NW1 9AL 
 8 Brookfield Primary School       Camden               N19 5DH 
 9 Carlton Primary School          Camden               NW5 4AX 
10 Edith Neville Primary School    Camden               NW1 1DN 
# … with 26,156 more rows
# ℹ Use `print(n = ...)` to see more rows

Rating Distribution

Oftsed ratings are a somewhat contentious system for grading schools. Looking at the distribution of ratings, it appears that the majority of schools are rated as Good.

Viewing the spatial distribution of these data would probably be rather interesting. Next steps for {blimey} will include information on postal codes, which should make this possible.