Parent review policy

Updated 15 October 2026

Parent reviews describe personal experience with a named school campus. They are separate from our source-backed school facts. Read them alongside the experience year, published school information and your own discussions with admissions.

Who can contribute

You must be at least 18, be a current or former parent or guardian with direct experience of the named campus, and use an active account with a confirmed email address. Write your own original review. One review per account and school is allowed; update that review when your experience changes. Do not use additional accounts to submit duplicate reviews.

Choose a public name or pseudonym, your parent or guardian relationship, a rating, title, review text and experience year. Do not use a child’s name as your public name. Your account email and private experience responses are not shown with the review. Submission includes separate publication consent and confirmations about adulthood, your experience, conflicts of interest and privacy. The limited publication licence is explained in the terms.

Do not review a school you own, represent or work for, act for a competing school, or accept a reward or other incentive for the review. School staff should use the factual correction process rather than submit a parent endorsement. A paid school service does not buy publication, a higher rating or removal of criticism.

What the experience labels mean

Self-declared experience: the author confirmed a parent or guardian connection to the campus. We have not recorded a separate plausibility check. Confirmation of the sign-in email shows control of an account, not attendance or use of a school service.

Experience plausibility checked: an administrator recorded a check of a private explanation of the author’s connection to the campus. It is a limited plausibility assessment. It does not guarantee enrolment, verify every statement or certify the school’s quality.

We may request a short private explanation in your account. Replying is voluntary, and a missing or insufficient response can mean a review cannot be published or kept published where the experience is contested. We do not offer document uploads. Do not send enrolment documents, identification, a child’s name or sensitive information to obtain a label.

Write about your own experience

Be specific about what you experienced and when. Distinguish your opinion from statements of fact, and avoid asserting another person’s motives. Fair criticism and low ratings are welcome. We apply the same rules to favourable and unfavourable reviews.

We do not publish fabricated or copied reviews, spam, advertising, threats, insults, discriminatory content, unlawful allegations, or identifying information about children, individual teachers, other families or other private people. Do not include health, religion or other sensitive personal information, private correspondence, contact details or documents. Describe a concern without identifying a child or individual member of staff.

Publication, edits and ratings

Every new review is pending until an administrator assesses it. We may request clarification, publish it, reject it, or hide an already published review while a specific concern is assessed. We do not materially rewrite your account: you can submit an edit yourself. Editing pauses publication and resets the experience-check label until the new version is reviewed. Submission does not guarantee publication.

Only currently published reviews contribute to a school’s displayed review count and average rating, with equal weight for each review and the average rounded to one decimal place. Reviews appear newest publication first. Pending, rejected, hidden, withdrawn and deleted reviews do not count. These are voluntary individual accounts rather than a representative survey or an inspection score. Parent ratings do not affect organic school search order. We do not copy external reviews or combine external-provider ratings with these reviews.

Report a review or challenge a decision

Anyone can report a review without an account. Identify the review, select a reason, explain your concern and confirm that the report is made in good faith. Your name and email are optional and private. Keep the secret receipt: it lets you return to the report’s status and decision. Providing an email does not subscribe you to alerts; this review feature sends no automatic emails.

We assess reports fairly, including challenges to whether the author had the claimed experience. A school does not have to identify an anonymous author before raising a genuine-contact concern. We may ask the author for a private response and proportionate clarification. A complaint alone does not decide the outcome, and lawful criticism is not removed merely because the school disagrees.

Moderation decisions include a reason in the author’s account and, where relevant, the report receipt. Check those pages for updates. The author can ask for reconsideration in their account; a reporter can use the secret receipt to challenge a report decision. Explain what should be reconsidered and any relevant information. We offer this without charge for at least six months after a decision is communicated. If the online option is unavailable, contact the operator below and quote the reference privately. Requests about unlawful content or your data can still be made afterwards.

A person assesses the reconsideration; automated form validation and abuse limits do not determine whether a review’s claims are lawful. Where possible, a different administrator should assess a challenge. You retain any applicable rights to approach a court, supervisory authority or competent dispute-resolution body.

Withdrawal, deletion and retention

You can use the delete/withdraw control in your account at any time. It immediately removes your review content and private verification text from active records and removes the review from public display, counts and averages. Contact us if you cannot access the account. Withdrawal does not affect the lawfulness of processing before withdrawal.

The operator can also permanently erase review content and private verification information to handle a privacy request or remove unnecessary identifying or sensitive information. A limited decision record remains available for reconsideration; an erased review cannot be republished without a new submission and permission.

Pending submissions expire after 90 days without a handling update, unless a report or reconsideration is still open. Unpublished content following rejection, hiding or removal is kept through the six-calendar-month reconsideration period after the latest decision, unless you delete or withdraw it sooner. An open report or reconsideration pauses that routine expiry until it has been handled. Your private experience response and a moderator’s private check note are removed within 30 days of their creation, or sooner on deletion or withdrawal. A minimal check outcome can remain with the review; it does not contain the private explanation.

After a report is decided, its private name, email and detailed explanation are removed within 90 days. Limited report and decision records remain through the six-calendar-month reconsideration period; open matters require active handling before their routine expiry. A minimal record linking an erased review to its account and school may remain for 184 days after erasure, or while an associated report or decision still requires handling, without the deleted review or verification text. These limits do not authorise silent closure of an unresolved report or prevent a later report. A specific legal obligation or legal claim may require narrowly limited records for longer; the controller assesses that separately.

Removal applies to the directory’s active records. Earlier copies may remain in restricted hosting backups until replaced under the provider’s backup cycle. Erasures must be reapplied before a restored backup is served. The privacy policy explains legal bases, recipients and your rights.

Contact

Use this contact if a report or reconsideration form is unavailable, or to raise a privacy, copyright or other legal concern. Factual catalogue corrections should be submitted through the school correction process; a source check is not a parent review.