What the shading shows
TUNDRA (Office for Students) follows state-school pupils who sat GCSEs in 2012 to 2016 and records whether they were in higher education at 18 or 19 (2014-15 to 2019-20). Areas across England are ranked and split into fifths: 1 is the lowest progression, 5 the highest. Very small areas are suppressed and shown grey.
POLAR4 (Office for Students) is the older measure: young people entering higher education 2009-10 to 2013-14, by MSOA, across the UK. It counts all young people, not just state-school pupils.
Adults with a degree is the OfS "Adult HE 2011" measure: the share of adults holding a higher education qualification in the 2011 Census, in fifths.
Deprivation is the English Index of Multiple Deprivation 2019, grouped into fifths of England. It uses the same 2011 neighbourhoods as TUNDRA and is closer in time to the TUNDRA cohorts than the 2025 index.
Lighter always means lower (less progression, fewer graduates, more deprivation). These are descriptions of places, not of any individual pupil or school.
How the school areas were guessed
Lincolnshire does not publish catchment maps. Its home-to-school transport policy uses "designated transport areas" built from parishes, but those boundaries are not published as data. So each neighbourhood (2011 LSOA) is given to the nearest school, measured in a straight line from the neighbourhood's population-weighted centre, and the neighbourhoods are merged into areas. Adjustments taken from the council's 2026-27 transport policy and FOI answers:
- Grantham's three non-selective town schools share one area, as the policy treats them together.
- Single-sex grammar pairs in the same town (Boston, Grantham, Spalding, Sleaford) share one grammar area.
- Neighbourhoods nearest a Lincoln-area comprehensive are shown as having no local grammar school.
- North and North East Lincolnshire are non-selective authorities, so they have no grammar area (some families there do apply to Caistor, Louth and others).
- University technical colleges and independent schools are shown as points only: they recruit from wide areas.
Real admissions depend on parental preference, faith criteria, sibling links, the 11+, transport and cross-border places, so treat every boundary as approximate. Schools just over the county border (for example in Rutland, Peterborough, Nottinghamshire) are not included.
School measures
Ofsted: the latest inspection outcome in Ofsted's management information as at 30 September 2026. Ofsted has changed its grading twice, so schools are on different systems and Ofsted says the old and new judgements are not directly comparable. To give one colour per school, each is put in one of three bands:
- Above expected: Outstanding (old overall grade, or quality of education where no overall grade was given), or Exceptional / Strong standard for curriculum and teaching on a new report card.
- Meets expected: Good, or Expected standard.
- Below expected: Requires improvement or Inadequate, or Needs attention / Urgent improvement.
The order of evidence used: a report card (from November 2025, curriculum and teaching grade); else the last 2019-framework overall grade; else, for inspections from September 2024 to November 2025 that gave no overall grade, the quality of education grade; else a grade confirmed by a later ungraded visit; else the last grade from before 2019 (Ofsted's August 2019 data). Every school popup says which was used. Independent schools are inspected by other bodies and are not in this data.
Ofsted, last graded inspection (before the reforms): a finer-grained score built for this map, not an Ofsted grade. Under the old system each full inspection graded separate areas from 1 (Outstanding) to 4 (Inadequate) as well as giving an overall grade. The score averages those area grades from the school's last such inspection and turns it round, so 4 means Outstanding in every area, 3 Good in every area and 1 Inadequate in every area. Since 2019 the areas were quality of education, behaviour and attitudes, personal development, and leadership and management (inspections from September 2024 to November 2025 still graded these, without an overall grade). For schools last fully inspected before September 2019, the 2015-framework areas are used (teaching, outcomes, personal development, leadership; inspections before 2015 had no separate personal development grade, so three areas). Those older results are drawn faded with a dashed outline. Where a school has since had a new-style report card, the score describes the inspection before it. The area grades tend to move together, so most schools score exactly 3.
Sixth-formers going on to a degree: DfE "Progression to higher education or training", students who finished 16 to 18 study in 2022/23, share who sustained a degree course. England average for state-funded mainstream schools: 69.2% (selective schools 82.7%; non-selective schools in highly selective areas 57.9%). Only schools with sixth forms have a figure, so many 11-16 schools are grey.
Nearest highly rated school: straight-line distance from each neighbourhood's population-weighted centre to the nearest state school that meets the chosen standard. University technical colleges (entry at 14) and independent schools are not counted; grammar schools only when ticked.
Ofsted grades and destination figures are known to track how advantaged a school's intake is, so a link between good ratings and high-progression areas does not show which causes which.
Area figures
For each school area: the estimated progression rate is the TUNDRA rate of its neighbourhoods weighted by their cohort sizes; "share of cohort in fifth 1" is the share of those pupils living in the lowest-progression fifth of England; "most deprived 20%" is the share of its neighbourhoods in IMD deciles 1-2.
Sources
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right. Contains National Statistics data © Crown copyright and database right. TUNDRA contains data from the DfE National Pupil Database; the DfE accepts no responsibility for inferences drawn from it. Map tiles © Esri, HERE, Garmin, © OpenStreetMap contributors.