Maintained research · refreshed 23 September 2026
UK Primary School Resource Link Rot: Rolling Audit
A regularly refreshed audit of broken education-resource links still carried by UK school and learning websites, with verified data.
Scope: This is a primary-school audit. It covers primary-school and primary-learning pages; it does not measure KS3, KS4 or secondary-school websites. TheLearnDen itself separately covers Years 1–10 and GCSE. Get a checked LearnDen replacement
Made by TheLearnDen Editorial Team · Report version 2026-09-23.1 · updated
- verified broken-resource placements
- 907
- distinct dead destinations
- 281
- UK school websites affected
- 315
At a glance
Headline findings
Five reconciled signals from all 907 published rows.
Finding 1
315
School websites still carrying a broken resource link
315 of the 396 carrying domains are UK schools: 167 on sch.uk and 148 more school-named domains.
More context
The other 81 are education charities and local learning sites.
Finding 2
281
Distinct dead destinations
907 verified placements point at 281 distinct dead URLs.
More context
The most-carried destination is Primary Homework Help — Literacy, reached from 42 domains.
Finding 3
English
Largest subject group
267 placements name an English destination, ahead of maths (215) and history (127).
More context
A further 133 point at section or site roots spanning several subjects.
Finding 4
7.4%
Carrying pages focused on remote learning
53 of the 717 carrying pages are home-learning, remote-learning or school-closure pages, across 40 domains.
Finding 5
65%
Placements with any mapped TheLearnDen destination
594 of 907 placements have a mapped TheLearnDen destination.
More context
459 are broad directory mappings; only 135 are exact or hub candidates, and 0 are approved for public recommendation.
For school and website editors
Replace a dead link with a checked LearnDen page
If your school or education website carries one of the dead links in this audit, find a current resource for the same year, subject and learning purpose. If the fit is not obvious, use the verified-page lookup below or email the two URLs; the editorial team will review the page context before suggesting a specific replacement.
Mappings in the CSV are research leads, not automatic recommendations. Publish a replacement only after its page-level fit has been checked.
Verified-page lookup
Find an affected page
Search the school or organisation, carrying-page address, dead-resource address or recorded subject. The lookup runs only in this browser and sends nothing to TheLearnDen.
907 verified placements
Type at least two characters. Results never publish a replacement automatically.
Start typing to find an exact audited page.
What the evidence says
The pattern, without the wall of text
A limited set of retired resources still appears across hundreds of live education pages.
315 of the 396 carrying domains are UK schools: 167 on sch.uk and 148 more school-named domains.
267 placements name an English destination, ahead of maths (215) and history (127).
53 of the 717 carrying pages are home-learning, remote-learning or school-closure pages, across 40 domains.
Read the full findingsThe complete evidence narrative is present in this page.
On 23 September 2026 we rechecked the carrying pages and verified 907 broken-resource placements on 717 live pages across 396 UK education domains. 315 of those domains are schools: 167 use sch.uk addresses and 148 more have school-identifying names. The remaining 81 are education charities or local learning sites.
Those placements lead to 281 distinct dead destinations across four audited resource sites. Primary Homework Help and Woodlands Junior account for 876 placements between them. The published CSV identifies every carrying page, anchor and destination.
English is the largest destination group at 267 placements, followed by maths at 215 and history at 127. Another 133 placements point to section or site roots spanning several subjects and remain separate rather than being guessed into one subject.
53 of 717 carrying pages focus on home learning, remote learning or school closure. That is 7.4% of carrying pages across 40 domains.
594 placements, 65%, have some mapped TheLearnDen destination. This is not the same as an approved replacement: 459 are broad directory mappings, 135 are exact or hub candidates, and 0 are currently approved for public recommendation.
Explore the evidence
Interactive charts
Hover, tap or use the arrow keys for exact values. Every chart has the same data in an accessible table.
Interactive view
Verified placements by subject
Subject is read from the dead destination URL. Multi-subject roots and unclassified URLs stay separate.
Use the arrow keys to explore values, or open the data table.
View accessible data table
| Group | Value |
|---|---|
| English | 267 |
| Maths | 215 |
| Section or site root (several subjects) | 133 |
| History | 127 |
| Science | 50 |
| Unclassified | 68 |
| Religious education | 28 |
| Geography | 19 |
Interactive view
Dead destinations ranked by carrying domains
Each carrying domain counts once per destination. Readable labels are shown here; the full URL remains in the tooltip and table.
Use the arrow keys to explore values, or open the data table.
View accessible data table
| Group | Value |
|---|---|
Primary Homework Help — Literacyhttp://www.primaryhomeworkhelp.co.uk/literacy/ | 42 domains |
Primary Homework Help — Mathshttp://www.primaryhomeworkhelp.co.uk/maths/ | 31 domains |
Woodlands Junior Resources — Mathshttp://resources.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/maths/ | 28 domains |
Primary Homework Help — Historyhttp://www.primaryhomeworkhelp.co.uk/history/index.html | 22 domains |
Woodlands Junior Resources — Homepagehttp://resources.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/ | 21 domains |
Primary Homework Help — Mathshttp://www.primaryhomeworkhelp.co.uk/maths/index.html | 20 domains |
Primary Homework Help — Religionhttp://www.primaryhomeworkhelp.co.uk/Religion.html | 18 domains |
Primary Homework Help — Sciencehttp://www.primaryhomeworkhelp.co.uk/science/index.html | 17 domains |
Interactive view
Which resource site the dead links point at
Four audited resource sites account for every placement in this dataset.
Use the arrow keys to explore values, or open the data table.
View accessible data table
| Group | Value |
|---|---|
| Primary Homework Help (certificate warning, then 404) | 492 |
| Woodlands Junior (site no longer answers) | 384 |
| Topmarks (site live, audited pages missing) | 30 |
| Teaching Ideas (site live, audited file missing) | 1 |
Interactive view
How the destination fails when clicked
Every placement was checked twice. Blocked or challenged responses were never counted as dead.
Use the arrow keys to explore values, or open the data table.
View accessible data table
| Group | Value |
|---|---|
| Certificate warning, then 404 | 492 |
| Site no longer answers | 384 |
| Site answers, page returns 404 | 31 |
Open evidence
Download the verified dataset
296.0 KB · 907 rows · updated 2026-09-23
Dataset checksum
674b944db2317fc86bdf11825bd24097b5569aeeac49464a795b25f5b1878b72Trust and transparency
How to read and reuse this audit
Open only the evidence you need. Every section is present in the initial HTML.
MethodologyHow every placement was verified
Every published placement cleared the same evidence bar:
- The live carrying page was fetched and the link was found in the HTML actually served.
- The destination was checked twice with a browser user agent in separate passes.
- Only repeat 404, 410, parked, NXDOMAIN or no-answer outcomes counted as dead.
- A 403, 429 or bot challenge stayed blocked and never counted as dead.
- Live sites with missing individual pages were separated from sites that no longer answer.
- A live page whose recorded link or exact destination path had disappeared was removed from the active dataset. A page that could not be read was held as temporarily unverifiable, never counted as fixed.
The domains were reached by crawling pools of UK education websites that linked to the audited resource sites. This is a census of verified findings, not a random sample of all UK schools, so no national prevalence estimate should be inferred.
Subject labels come only from the destination URL. Section roots stay multi-subject and unclear URLs stay unclassified. Malformed links remain in the dataset when the markup itself causes the failure.
LimitationsWhat this audit can and cannot claim
- The 396 domains were selected by crawlability in pool order; blocked websites are absent.
- The counts are a verified floor, not an estimate of every broken education link in the UK.
- Subject and remote-learning shares can change as more carrying pages are verified.
- 907 placements point to confirmed dead external destinations; 0 malformed resource reference fails before reaching the intended external address.
- Websites change. Resolved links are excluded from this active dataset after verification; temporarily inaccessible pages are retained in the status bundle for a later retry.
- TheLearnDen publishes the mapped destinations, so the 65% mapping figure is an interested measure and is deliberately separated from approval status.
Publisher disclosure and reuseWho produced the audit and how it may be reused
TheLearnDen produced and publishes this audit. No school, resource provider or listed website paid for inclusion, exclusion or ranking. TheLearnDen also publishes the mapped destinations shown in the dataset; no mapped recommendation is described as approved unless its review state says approved.
You may quote headline figures and reuse the charts with attribution to TheLearnDen and a link to the canonical report. The CSV may be reused with the same attribution. Do not imply that TheLearnDen endorses a third-party product, that the audit estimates all UK schools, or that an unapproved mapping is a recommendation.
Correction policyHow to challenge or update a row
If anything on this page is wrong, tell us and we will fix it. Errors corrected within 48h of verification, and any change to a published figure is noted on this page with the date and previous value.
Every headline figure is rebuilt from the CSV published here. If a listed link has been fixed, send the carrying-page address and we will re-check the row within the same 48-hour window.