Terms of Service

1. Acceptance of Terms

By accessing or using School Atlas (“the Service”), you agree to be bound by these Terms of Service. If you do not agree, please do not use the Service.

2. Who We Are

School Atlas is operated by Stephen Spence (sole trader). Our correspondence address is 182 Heythorp Street, London, SW18 5BU. You can contact us at legal@schoolatlas.co.uk.

3. Description of Service

School Atlas is an independent school-finding service for parents and guardians, offered as a free tier with an optional paid Pro subscription (see §7). We aggregate publicly available data about schools across the UK to help you compare and find schools. We are not affiliated with any government body, local authority, or school.

4. Eligibility

You must be at least 16 years old to create an account on School Atlas. By creating an account, you confirm that you meet this age requirement. The Service is intended for parents, guardians, and education professionals.

Using School Atlas for your work — if you work with children or families (for example as a teacher, SENCo, social worker, solicitor, advocate or placement officer), you may use your own account, including Pro, for that work. You may share what you find, such as a shortlist, a screenshot or a summary, with the people you are advising or acting for, including in reports or documents you prepare for them. An account is for one person, so colleagues need accounts of their own. This does not allow reselling access, or republishing the Service's content in bulk or as a data source for others (sections 9 and 12).

5. Data Accuracy

We make every effort to keep our data accurate and up-to-date by sourcing from official channels including the Department for Education (GIAS), Ofsted, and local council admissions data. However:

• Data may not reflect the very latest changes (e.g. a recent Ofsted inspection not yet published)
• Admissions distances, catchment areas, and oversubscription criteria change annually
• Fee information for independent schools may be out of date — always verify with the school directly
• We provide no guarantee of accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose

School Atlas is an informational tool. It should not be relied upon as the sole basis for school admissions decisions. Always check with the school or local authority directly before making decisions.

6. User Accounts

You may create a free account to save shortlists, set preferences, and access personalised features. You are responsible for maintaining the security of your account credentials. You must not share your account with others.

We reserve the right to suspend or terminate accounts that violate these terms or are used for automated scraping, spamming, or any abusive purpose.

7. Subscriptions & Billing

School Atlas offers an optional paid subscription tier (Pro) with additional features. By subscribing, you agree to the following:

• Billing — subscriptions are billed monthly or annually via Stripe. All prices shown are the total price you pay in GBP. The operator is not currently VAT-registered, so no VAT is charged on subscriptions. If we become VAT-registered in the future, a launch-price subscription will not cost more because of it, and every other subscription is covered by Price changes below
• Auto-renewal — subscriptions renew automatically at the end of each billing period unless cancelled
• Free trials (institution portal only) — where we offer a 14-day free trial, your payment method is authorised at signup but not charged during the trial. If you do not cancel before the end of the trial, your first billing period begins automatically and your card is charged for the selected plan. You can cancel at any time during the trial from your Account page with no charge
• Cancellation — you may cancel at any time from your Account page or via the Stripe billing portal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period; you retain access to paid features until then
• Starting Pro, and changing your mind — for Pro bought from 28 September 2026, Pro starts straight away when you ask for it to, by ticking a box before you pay. You then lose the 14-day right to change your mind and get a full refund (the right to cancel under the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013). You can still cancel your subscription at any time, as above. If the law treats Pro as a service rather than digital content, you can still cancel in the first 14 days and pay only for the days you used.
• Refunds — if Pro doesn't have the data we describe for your school, we will put it right or refund you. Refunds are made when you ask, not automatically, and we do not refund part of a billing period except as our Refund Policy describes. Pro bought before 28 September 2026 keeps the refund terms it was sold with, including a full refund on request within 14 days of buying. Contact support@schoolatlas.co.uk
• Launch price held — anyone who subscribes before 1 March 2027 keeps the launch price for as long as they stay subscribed, at every renewal. We do not raise it. If you switch between monthly and annual billing from your Account page, you pay the launch price for the other period. If your subscription ends (you cancel and your paid period runs out, or a failed payment ends it) and you subscribe again later, the price on offer that day applies
• Price changes — from 1 March 2027 new subscribers pay the standard price shown on our pricing page. We may change the price of a subscription that began on or after that day when the costs of the services Pro relies on rise (for example hosting, data, payment processing or tax) or the law changes. We will email you at least 30 days before a new price first applies to you. It applies from your next renewal, never part-way through a period you have paid for, and an annual subscription keeps its price until its year ends. You can cancel before the new price applies and you will not pay it. If you switch between monthly and annual billing, or subscribe again after your subscription ended, you pay the standard price on offer that day
• Service suspension — if payment fails after reasonable retry attempts, we may downgrade your account to the free tier

By subscribing, you also agree to Stripe's terms of service for payment processing.

8. Institution Accounts

Schools and educational organisations may create institution accounts to claim and manage their profiles on School Atlas. By creating an institution account:

• Verification — you confirm that you are authorised to represent the school or organisation you are claiming
• Content responsibility — you are responsible for the accuracy of any information you update on your school profile. School Atlas reserves the right to revert changes that are inaccurate or misleading
• Team members — institution owners can invite team members. You are responsible for managing access and removing members who leave your organisation
• Institution subscriptions — paid institution tiers provide additional features such as analytics and promoted listings. Institution billing terms follow the same rules as individual subscriptions above, except that the launch price hold and the price changes terms above apply to Pro for parents only: we will give institution subscribers at least 30 days' notice, by email, before any price increase
• Data portability — institutions may request an export of their analytics and profile data by contacting support@schoolatlas.co.uk
• Data processing — for personal data (such as parent enquiries and review replies) that School Atlas processes on your behalf through the portal, our Institution Data Processing Agreementapplies and forms part of these terms. It satisfies the written-contract requirement in Article 28 of the UK GDPR

9. Acceptable Use

You agree not to:

• Use the Service for any unlawful purpose
• Scrape, crawl, or bulk-download data from the Service without permission
• Attempt to interfere with or disrupt the Service's infrastructure
• Impersonate any person or entity
• Use the Service to harass, bully, or intimidate others

10. User Reviews & Defamation

School Atlas may allow users to leave reviews or comments about schools. If you submit a review, you must ensure that it is truthful, based on genuine personal experience, and not misleading, abusive, or defamatory.

School Atlas does not pre-moderate reviews for factual accuracy but moderates all user content for compliance with these terms and applicable law. As a website operator, School Atlas relies on the defence provided by Section 5 of the Defamation Act 2013 (operators of websites).

If you believe a review published on School Atlas is false, defamatory, or abusive, you may submit a notice-and-takedown request by emailing legal@schoolatlas.co.uk with the following:

• The URL of the review in question
• An explanation of why the content is defamatory or inaccurate
• Supporting evidence where available

We will follow the process set out in the Defamation (Operators of Websites) Regulations 2013, including notifying the poster and allowing a reasonable period for response. We reserve the right to remove any content that we reasonably consider to be false, defamatory, or in breach of these terms.

Schools with a claimed institution profile may respond to reviews directly through their profile dashboard.

11. Intellectual Property

The School Atlas name, logo, and original content (including UI design, analysis tools, and editorial commentary) are the intellectual property of School Atlas.

12. Third-Party Data & Licensing

Public-sector school data shown on this Service is Crown Copyright and is reproduced under the terms of the Open Government Licence v3.0 from the Department for Education, Ofsted, Welsh Government, Estyn, Scottish Government, Education Scotland, HM Inspectorate of Education (Scotland), Department of Education (Northern Ireland), Education & Training Inspectorate and the Office for National Statistics.

Independent Schools Inspectorate (ISI) reports are not under the Open Government Licence and remain the copyright of the Independent Schools Inspectorate; we do not reproduce them on this Service, and pages for schools ISI inspects link to ISI’s report search. Rights-holders wishing to query specific content should contact legal@schoolatlas.co.uk.

For a full list of our data sources and their licences, see our Data Sources & Attribution page.

You may not reproduce, redistribute, or commercially exploit the Service or its original content without our prior written consent, except as section 4 allows for your work. Public-sector data remains available under the Open Government Licence direct from the originating bodies.

13. Limitation of Liability

Nothing in these terms limits or excludes our liability for:

• death or personal injury caused by our negligence;
• fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation;
• breach of your statutory rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, including our duty to perform paid services with reasonable care and skill (section 49); or
• any other liability that cannot be limited or excluded under English law.

Subject to the above, and because School Atlas is a relatively low-cost service, our total liability to you arising out of or in connection with your use of the Service (whether in contract, tort, for breach of statutory duty, or otherwise) is limited as follows:

• Free users (no paid subscription) — capped at £100 in aggregate.
• Paid subscribers (parent or institution) — capped at the greater of £100 or the amount you have actually paid us in subscription fees during the twelve (12) months immediately before the event giving rise to the claim.

We also exclude, to the fullest extent permitted by law, any liability for: (a) loss of profits, loss of business, or loss of anticipated savings; (b) loss or corruption of data that you have not also stored elsewhere; and (c) any indirect or consequential loss.

School Atlas is an informational tool. The Service, and the data it displays, are made available on an “as available” basis — we do not guarantee that the data is complete, current, or free from error, and we do not give any warranty that the Service will meet your specific requirements. You should always verify material information (fees, admissions criteria, inspection outcomes, term dates) directly with the school or local authority before relying on it for a decision. This clause does not affect our statutory duty under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 to perform paid services with reasonable care and skill.

14. Third-Party Links and Data

The Service may contain links to external websites (e.g. school websites, Ofsted reports, GOV.UK). We are not responsible for the content, accuracy, or availability of these external resources.

15. Changes to These Terms

We may update these terms from time to time — for example, to reflect changes in the law, in the features we offer, or in how the Service works.

Minor changes (such as typographical corrections, clarifications, or updates that do not reduce your rights or materially change the Service) take effect when we post the updated terms on this page. We will update the “Last updated” date at the top of this page.

Material changes — any change that reduces your rights, increases your obligations, changes price or billing terms, changes how we handle personal data in a way that requires your attention, or materially changes the features of a paid subscription — will take effect no sooner than 30 days after we notify you. We will give notice by email (to the address on your account) and through an in-product notice. If you do not agree to a material change, you may cancel your subscription before the change takes effect and, where applicable, you will be entitled to a pro-rated refund of any unused prepaid period.

If you continue to use the Service after a material change has taken effect, you will be deemed to have accepted the updated terms.

16. Severability

If any provision of these terms is found to be invalid or unenforceable by a court of competent jurisdiction, the remaining provisions shall continue in full force and effect.

17. Entire Agreement

These Terms of Service, together with our Privacy Policy, constitute the entire agreement between you and School Atlas regarding your use of the Service.

18. Your Consumer Rights

Nothing in these terms affects your statutory rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, or other applicable UK consumer protection legislation. Where any provision of these terms conflicts with your mandatory statutory rights, your statutory rights shall prevail.

19. Governing Law & Jurisdiction

These terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales. Any disputes arising out of or in connection with them will be subject to the jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales.

Consumer carve-out: if you are a consumer resident in Scotland or Northern Ireland, nothing in this clause prevents you from bringing proceedings in the courts of the part of the United Kingdom where you are domiciled, or from relying on mandatory rules of law of that jurisdiction that cannot be derogated from by agreement.

20. Contact

For questions about these terms, please contact us at legal@schoolatlas.co.uk.