How is my distance to the priority schools calculated?
These distances are calculated once a year (between July to september) on the basis of the established schools file and remain valid for a whole school year. Changes during the year will not cause adjustment of the calculations (unless a school stops to exist) and distances shown are binding, unless when doing the remote calculations mistakenly is departed from the agreed calculation method (see calculation method).
Calculation method
We calculate the exact walking distance (in metres) from the child's home address to the entrance to the school grounds via the Google Maps API. BAG coordinates (Basic registration Addresses and Buildings, the official system for this registration) are used for the home address. For each school, we use the coordinates of the entrance to the school grounds as determined on site.
The distance shown on School Finder may deviate from the distance that you have calculated using Google Maps, because Google determines the location of the address entered in Google Maps itself.
The City of Amsterdam's Research and Statistics Office was involved in developing this new policy and used Google Maps to calculate the walking distances between home addresses and schools at the request of the school administration boards. Based on these calculations, the 15 closest schools to each home address were determined on the basis of walking distance. Nearly 7.5 million calculations were done for this purpose.