Methodology & caveats
How this was compiled, what it can and can't tell you, and where to check when a detail matters to a real decision.
What we did
Every UTC dossier on this site was compiled from public sources only — data gathered and cross-checked in July 2026:
- Each UTC's own website — for its current name, specialisms, employer partners and age range.
- The Baker Dearing Educational Trust's official directory at utcolleges.org, the umbrella body for the whole UTC programme.
- Ofsted's report search (reports.ofsted.gov.uk and gov.uk) — for inspection ratings and dates.
- Get Information about Schools (DfE's get-information-schools.service.gov.uk) — for URNs, academy trust names, and published capacity/roll figures where accessible.
- Wikipedia and contemporary news coverage — mainly for closure histories and rebranding chronology, cross-checked against primary sources where possible.
What it is — and isn't
Rolls, Ofsted ratings, employer partners and even names change — several UTCs in this dataset have rebranded or changed academy trust more than once. Every figure here is a point-in-time reading — data gathered and cross-checked in July 2026. Before applying anywhere, check the UTC's own current site and its latest Ofsted report directly.
Pupil-roll figures in particular come from whatever year each UTC most recently published one — they are not simultaneous, so the network-wide enrolment total on the numbers page is a rough order of magnitude, not a census.
The honesty standard
This site is part of the mathsschools.co.uk family, which sets out to be more useful than the schools' own marketing by saying plainly what isn't known. Where a field — a URN, a capacity, an employer partner list — couldn't be confirmed from a credible source, it's shown as not confirmed rather than estimated or left implying certainty. Notable facts are only included where they're independently sourced, not paraphrased from a prospectus's own claims about itself.
The closures page follows the same rule in the other direction: it states documented reasons for closure, not speculation, and distinguishes UTCs that shut outright from ones that converted into a different kind of school on the same site.
Corrections
These are observable, checkable facts, so if something here is wrong or out of date, it's fixable. Get in touch via the main site's contact page.
- Snapshot date
- Data gathered and cross-checked in July 2026
- Scope
- 44 open UTCs + 15 closed/converted
- Sources
- UTC websites, Baker Dearing, Ofsted, DfE/GIAS, Wikipedia & news
- Affiliation
- None — independent and unofficial