An unbiased, transparent, and community-driven measure of school quality.
When searching for the right school, parents are often faced with a dizzying array of data points, official ratings that can be years out of date, and marketing materials that all say the same thing. The Indeparent Score was created to cut through the noise and provide a single, powerful metric that reflects a school's current performance based on the real-world experiences of the parents, students, and teachers who know it best.
How is the Score Calculated?
There's nothing fancy going on here. The Indeparent Score is based on the industry-standard Net Promoter Score (NPS) methodology.
We ask one simple question right at the start of the review: "How likely would you be to recommend this school to a parent just like you?", on a scale of 0-10.
Then we categorise the responses:
Promoters (9-10): Enthusiastic, loyal parents who are very happy with the school and highly likely to recommend it.
Passives (7-8): Satisfied but unenthusiastic parents who may be open to other options.
Detractors (0-6): Parents who have not had an entirely positive experience and are unlikely to recommend the school.
Finally the percentage of Detractors is subtracted from the percentage of Promoters (Passives are ignored) to find the final score.
The result is a score ranging from -100 to +100.
What is a “Good” NPS Score?
There is no single, universal definition of a “good” Net Promoter Score. What counts as strong performance varies significantly from one industry to another, depending on expectations, cost, emotional investment, and how much genuine choice customers have.
For example:
Consumer retail and e-commerce often see average NPS scores in the 30–60 range, with standout brands pushing higher.
Airlines, utilities, and telecoms typically score much lower, often 0–30, due to price sensitivity, friction, and limited alternatives.
Luxury brands and premium services can achieve 50–70+, driven by high service levels and strong emotional loyalty.
Healthcare and education tend to sit somewhere in between, reflecting the fact that decisions are deeply personal, long-term, and not easily reversed.
Independent schools are a particularly complex case. Parents are making high-stakes, long-term decisions involving their children’s wellbeing, education, and identity — not a simple transactional purchase. Expectations are high, and even positive experiences can coexist with frustrations or trade-offs.
Because of this, it would be misleading to apply benchmarks from unrelated industries.
As Indeparent gathers more data across a wide range of independent schools, we will be able to establish sector-specific context — showing what scores are typical, what counts as relatively strong, and where a school sits compared to others like it. Over time, this will allow parents and schools to interpret the Indeparent Score not just in isolation, but in relation to the wider independent-school landscape.
For now, the most important thing to look at is not just the number itself, but:
how it compares to similar schools,
how it changes over time,
and what parents are actually saying behind the score.
Why Trust the Indeparent Score?
It's timely: The score is calculated based on reviews from a recent period (you'll see the count of reviews and time period on the page), ensuring it reflects the school's current reality, not its past.
It's transparent: There's no secret algorithm here, just a tried and tested industry-standard methodology.
It's Community-Powered: The score rises and falls based on the collective voice of the community. To ensure fairness, we only display a score after a minimum number of reviews have been submitted.