Methodology

Every metric on GeoReality comes from a named international institution or established index. Missing data is shown as missing — values are not interpolated, estimated, or filled in from secondary sources.

The data covers seven categories:

• Economy — GDP, income, prices, employment, trade, effective tax burden, pension generosity. Sources: World Bank, IMF (fallback for PPP projections), OECD (tax wedge, pension replacement rates), Eurostat (median disposable income, energy poverty, electricity prices for EU countries), Numbeo (cost of living + housing affordability).
• Society — health, education, demographics, equality, happiness, religion. Sources: UNDP (HDI, Gender Inequality Index), World Bank, WHO (healthcare spend, hospital beds, physicians, road deaths, suicide, alcohol, PM2.5), OECD PISA (15-year-old education outcomes), EF Education First (English Proficiency Index), World Happiness Report, Pew Research (religious composition), Eurostat (tertiary education, youth unemployment for EU countries).
• Safety & governance — peace, rule of law, press freedom, democracy, crime by type. Sources: Institute for Economics and Peace (Global Peace Index), World Bank Worldwide Governance Indicators, Reporters Sans Frontières (Press Freedom Index), Economist Intelligence Unit (Democracy Index), Freedom House, UNODC (assault, robbery, sexual violence, kidnapping rates).
• Quality of life — cost of living, rent, restaurant + grocery prices, healthcare access, safety perception, local purchasing power, housing burden, unmet medical need. Sources: Numbeo 2026 (city-aggregated country indices), Eurostat (housing overburden rate, at-risk-of-poverty rate, unmet medical need, crime perception for EU countries).
• Digital & environment — internet speeds, emissions, renewable energy, forest cover, innovation, disaster risk, climate vulnerability. Sources: Ookla Speedtest Global Index (fixed + mobile), World Bank, WIPO (Global Innovation Index), World Risk Report (disaster vulnerability), ND-GAIN (climate change adaptation index).
• Climate — daily temperature, monthly precipitation, daily sunshine hours per capital city. Drawn from ERA5 reanalysis (Copernicus / ECMWF / Open-Meteo), fixed 2015–2019 base period. Coverage is incomplete — not every country is in the dataset, and country-level averages are not always informative for places with strong regional climate variation.
• Travel & practical — visa-free access, borders, capital coordinates, languages, currency, electrical plug type, dial code, driving side. Sources: Passport Index dataset (GB / DE / US passports vs all destinations), restcountries.com (current administrative data).

Source attribution

Every metric has a named source registered in the project's metrics registry — 120+ indicators, each tied to a specific dataset and API endpoint. Source strings and vintage years appear in the tooltip next to each metric on country profile and compare pages.

Refresh schedule

• Macro indicators (economy, society, governance): refreshed annually when the underlying institutions release new editions — typically World Bank in spring, UNDP in autumn.
• Cost of living, housing and healthcare indices (Numbeo): refreshed annually.
• OECD PISA (education outcomes): refreshed every three years. Current cycle: 2022. Next results publish September 2026.
• Climate normals (ERA5): fixed 2015–2019 base period. Recut when the project moves the window forward (manual decision, not automated).
• Visa-free access: refreshed when material policy changes are announced.

Composite scores

GeoReality does not produce blended cross-source composite scores. Each metric is shown in its native unit and scale: HDI 0–1, GPI 1–5 (lower is safer), Numbeo 0–100 (NYC = 100), EF EPI 0–700. Where multiple metrics appear in a single display (the At a Glance rings on a country profile, the comparison table on a guide page), the underlying values stay separate.

Corrections

If a number looks wrong, contact details are on the About page. Corrections are checked against the underlying source.

UK Regions & schools

The UK Regions table compares 361 Local Authorities across pay, housing, council tax, crime, deprivation and school quality. Every figure comes from an official UK government publication. Where the four nations measure things differently, the table flags it rather than silently mashing the numbers together.

Pay

Median weekly pay for full-time employees who live in the area, before income tax — from the ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, refreshed each October. “Residence” rather than “workplace” matters because it reflects what people earn where they live, not what high-paying commuters bring into the area (a Tower Hamlets resident median is much lower than the Canary Wharf workplace figure).

House prices

For England and Wales, the figure is the median sale price from the ONS House Price Statistics for Small Areas — half of homes sold for less, half for more. For Scotland, no equivalent median is published by Local Authority, so the table uses a mean price from the HM Land Registry UK House Price Index. Means are skewed upwards by luxury sales, so Scottish numbers can read higher than the typical experience. Scottish rows are marked with a † so the difference is visible. Northern Ireland isn't covered.

Rent

For England and Wales, the median monthly rent on a newly-signed let, from the ONS Price Index of Private Rents. For Scotland, the median advertised rent for a 2-bedroom property, from the Scottish Government's annual private-sector rent survey. The two methodologies differ — advertised vs newly-signed, 2-bed vs all sizes — so the cross-border comparison is approximate. Scottish rows carry a †. Northern Ireland isn't covered.

Council tax

The Band D bill for the year, including every precept that lands on the bill — police, fire, parish and adult social care. From MHCLG for England and the Welsh Government for Wales; the two publish on the same basis so values are directly comparable. Scotland uses a different banding system; Northern Ireland uses domestic rates instead of council tax. Neither is shown.

Crime

Total recorded offences per 1,000 residents, excluding fraud (which the Home Office reports nationally rather than locally). The denominator is residents only, so the rate is overstated in places that attract large daytime populations — Westminster shows around 380 per 1,000 against an England median near 80, but Westminster's ~210,000 residents host millions of daily visitors. The figure is the official one; the lived experience for residents is closer to the England average. England and Wales only.

Deprivation

Higher scores mean more deprived. The Index of Multiple Deprivation combines seven dimensions — income, employment, education, health, crime, barriers to housing and services, and the living environment. Published by MHCLG; the current edition is 2019 and the next is due in 2026 or 2027. England only — Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland each publish their own version on a different methodology, and official guidance is clear that they don't cross-compare. A handful of councils created in the 2021 reorganisation (Cumberland, North Yorkshire, Somerset, and the new Northants pair) pre-date the 2019 index, so for those the score is built up from their predecessor districts.

Schools (England)

Around 21,800 state-funded primary, secondary and special schools in England, each inspected by Ofsted. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have separate inspection regulators — Estyn, Education Scotland and the Education and Training Inspectorate — using methodologies that don't compare with Ofsted's. For schools in those nations, the Local Authority page links straight to the relevant regulator.

The school data here draws on the Department for Education's official school registry (Get Information about Schools), Ofsted's monthly inspection-grades publication, and Ofsted's longer-running inspection-history publication. The first gives the current list, the second the latest grades, and the third the older grades and the inspection record of schools that have since been renumbered.

The legacy grade

Until September 2024, every Ofsted inspection ended in a single overall judgement: Outstanding, Good, Requires Improvement, or Inadequate. Most schools still carry one of these because Ofsted's full inspection cycle runs around four years, so the bulk of inspections still on file pre-date the framework change. This is the column labelled “Legacy grade” on the schools table.

Where a school's legacy grade comes from

A school's legacy grade can come from any of four places:

1. Its own most recent full inspection — the standard case.
2. A monitoring visit that confirmed the previous grade still applies (Ofsted's “the school remains Good” phrasing).
3. An earlier full inspection at the same school, when more recent activity has been a monitoring check rather than a fresh grading.
4. The grade of the school's predecessor, when a school has been renumbered (typically on conversion to an academy) and hasn't yet been inspected under its new identity. The table footnotes the older identifier so the source is visible.

Together these cover around 99% of state-funded schools. The remainder are genuinely new schools — Ofsted typically inspects within two to three years of opening, so a school that's been around for less than that won't have a grade yet.

The new report card (post-September 2024)

In September 2024 Ofsted retired the single overall grade and replaced it with a multi-area “report card”: seven judgements covering Leadership and governance, Achievement, Curriculum and teaching, Attendance and behaviour, Personal development, Inclusion, and Safeguarding. Each uses a five-band scale (Exceptional, Strong, Expected, Needs attention, Urgent improvement); safeguarding is binary, Met or Not met. These judgements aren't directly comparable with the old 1-4 — “Expected standard” sits somewhere between Good and Requires Improvement, with no clean equivalent.

About 1% of state-funded schools have a report card today; the share will grow as Ofsted works through its four-year inspection cycle. The schools table shows the two systems in separate columns. Where a school has both an older legacy grade and a fresh report card, the report card reflects the current state of the school and the legacy grade is shown for context.

No overall grade is shown for report-card schools. There's no defensible way to translate the new judgements into the old 1-4 scale, so the report card is shown as it stands.

Schools under intervention

A school rated Inadequate can carry one of two additional labels. Special Measures means the Department for Education is formally intervening — leadership powers can be suspended and reinspection happens every six months. Serious Weaknesses is the step below: the school is failing in important respects but without the full statutory takeover. Both show up as a small red label below an Inadequate grade.

Grammar schools

The 164 remaining selective state secondaries carry a small Grammar label next to the school name. Concentrated in Kent, Buckinghamshire, Lincolnshire and Trafford. Admission is by 11-plus exam; catchment, intake and outcomes differ substantially from non-selective comprehensives in the same area.

“Schools rated Good or better” at LA level

On a Local Authority page, the “Schools rated Good or better” card counts schools with a legacy grade (Outstanding or Good), weighted equally per school. Schools that only have a new-framework report card are excluded — mixing the two scales would produce a misleading composite. The cross-LA comparison uses pupil-weighted ratios instead, since that's the fairer figure when ranking different-sized areas against each other. See the UK Regions table.

How fresh is the data?

• The official school registry refreshes daily.
• Ofsted publishes a monthly snapshot of the latest inspection grades.
• The fuller inspection-history publication updates roughly twice a year, in May and November.