2016 first quarterly project: schools

Happy New Year! (and Happy New Mapping Year!) The first Quarterly Project for 2016 is now under way and is Schools. There are really two strands to this project.

The first is to remotely (armchai)r map and get an increase in coverage of the number of schools

The latest government data is for January 2012 which shows 24,372 schools in England (including nursery schools, state-funded primary schools, state-funded secondary schools, special schools, pupil referral units and independent schools.)

For Wales that data is from January 2015 : 13 Nursery Schools; 1,330 primary schools;6 middle schools;207 secondary schools;and 37 special schools.

For Scotland data is from September2011 and shows 2,553 pre-schools, 2,081 primary schools, 367 secondary schools and 158 special schools.

For Northern Ireland data is from October 2015 and shows 96 nursery schools; 827 primary schools; 202 secondary schools and 39 special schools. Additionally there are 14 independent schools and 1 hospital school.

That gives a total of 32,318 schools. Taginfo shows 27,191 schools which is 84.1% coverage in OSM. However 6,348 are represented as nodes only. It would be great to have these as polygons and associated buildings. It would also be great to have close to 100% coverage.

This data comes from a cursory web search. If anyone has better or newer data, it’s welcome.

Schools can be remotely mapped (armchair mapping) by using Ordnance Survey OpenData StreetView(OSSV) data where school buildings are individually identified (but not always named). This data needs to be cross-checked with Bing aerial imagery which can often show OSSV schools as either having been demolished with a resultant brownfield site or housing redevelopment, or with buildings having been demolished and rebuilt in a new configuration. Often where a school site has ceased to exist, a completely new school site has been constructed nearby.

The second strand is for those who prefer surveying: existing school names change (e.g change to Academy Status, amalgamations); there will schools in OSM with no name, and with the advent of free schools, new ones will be appearing constantly.

So there’s plenty to do over the next few months!

There’s a progress table already established. You’ll need to access the sheet marked Schools.