How Much Land Does One School Serve? Official Catchments and Nearest-School Zones Across the United Kingdom

There is no map of school catchments for the United Kingdom. Scottish councils draw a catchment for almost every school, but England, Wales and Northern Ireland have no national set, and many councils publish none. I assembled the open records of every state school in the four nations, 27,024 schools with their locations and rolls, together with 2,992 official catchment areas published as open map services by 33 councils, and computed straight-line nearest-school zones (Voronoi cells clipped to land) for every primary and secondary school. The biggest official catchment found is Golspie High School in the Highland Council area, 2,215 km² of land for 264 pupils. The median nearest-school zone is 2.4 km² for an English primary school and 8.2 km² for a Scottish one. 53% of Scotland's land, but 6% of England's, lies more than 5 km in a straight line from a primary school. Where councils publish catchments, 66% of catchment land (by area) is nearest to the catchment's own school, so nearest-school zones are a fair first approximation but differ from the official answer about a third of the time. The data, code and an interactive map are openly available. The results describe geography, not admissions: real access depends on admission rules, faith, selection, roads and ferries.

Interactive version: https://maps.tristanhotham.com/school-catchments/. Data and code: https://github.com/Tristan-Hotham/school-catchments. Blog post: https://blog.tristanhotham.com/2026/10/28/school-catchments/.

Sources: Department for Education, Get Information About Schools; Welsh Government address list of schools; Scottish Government, Scottish School Roll and Locations; Department of Education Northern Ireland school level enrolment data 2025/26; councils' open catchment services (listed in catchment_sources.csv); ONS Local Authority Districts boundaries; OS Open Names. Open Government Licence v3.0. Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2026.