About us
How we verify school and admissions data
By ExamKind Editorial TeamFacts checked 19 October 2026Last reviewed 19 October 2026
In short
Every 11+ date, score and admission rule on ExamKind comes from an official source: a council, school, consortium, test provider or government body. We save a dated copy of each source, then two independent checks extract each fact with the exact sentence it came from. Only facts that both checks agree on are shown as verified. Anything unconfirmed is labelled clearly, never guessed.
Which sources do we trust?
We use sources in this order:
- Official admissions sources: council admissions pages and guides, each school's determined admission policy, consortium websites and test providers' own pages.
- Government sources: for example GOV.UK guidance and the School Admissions Code, which sets the national rules in England.
- Reputable reporting: used to find out that something has changed, then checked against an official source before we rely on it.
- Everything else, such as forums, tutoring sites and social media, which we may read for leads but never use as the source of a fact.
Parents' own reports, such as a rumoured pass mark, are never shown as fact.
How is a fact checked?
- We save the source. Our capture tool reads the page or PDF politely (it follows each website's rules for automated visitors) and stores a copy with the date, the address and a digital fingerprint of the file.
- First pass. The fact is extracted from the saved copy with the exact sentence that supports it.
- Second pass. A second, independent pass extracts the same fact from the same saved copy without seeing the first answer. Where we have only one AI reviewer available, the second pass is an automated re-check that finds the quoted sentence in the saved source and re-reads every number and date from it.
- Comparison. If the two passes agree, the fact is verified. If they disagree, it is marked as disputed and a human decides. If official documents contradict each other, we keep both readings and ask the school or council to clarify.
What do the labels on our pages mean?
| Label | What it means |
|---|---|
| Verified [date] | Two checks agree, against the official source saved on that date |
| To be confirmed | We have a source but the two checks did not agree, or official documents contradict each other |
| Not yet published | The school or council has not published this yet (for example, next year's test date) |
| Not known yet | We could not read the source, or it does not say |
We never fill a gap with last year's value. A page will not present an old date as if it were current.
What happens when a website blocks us?
Some school and council websites ask automated tools not to read them. We respect that. A person collects the document by hand instead, and we record that it was captured manually. Until then, the facts from that document show as "not known yet".
How do we keep facts fresh?
Admission rules for each year are usually decided early in the year before entry, and test dates and results move every year. We re-check sources on a schedule and watch key pages more closely in busy weeks, such as registration and results season. When a source changes, every fact that depends on it is checked again and every page that uses it updates.
Why do national pages link to area and school pages?
Many 11+ details are set locally: each area or school decides its own test, dates, pass mark and admission rules. Our national guides explain how things generally work and link to the area and school pages, such as Buckinghamshire, for the local facts. That way each local fact lives in one place and is checked once.
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