Data Sources & Methodology

School Nest brings together four different kinds of information:

1. Official public information — Published by government bodies and reproduced as it appears in the source.
2. Information published by schools — Written and maintained by schools that have claimed and verified their listing.
3. School Nest calculations — Values we work out from official inputs, such as the distance between a searched location and a school. These are always ours, not government measures.
4. AI-assisted information — Answers and search interpretations produced by School Nest AI from the information above. See AI-assisted information.

We keep these apart throughout the service so you can always tell what is an official record and what a school has told us about itself.

The core England school directory comes from the Department for Education's Get Information About Schools service. It provides each school's name, unique reference number, type, phase, age range, address, local authority, status and other official establishment details.

School Nest currently covers England. Support for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland depends on their own official sources and is not yet part of the service.

Source: Department for Education, Get Information about Schools (public bulk downloads). Content available under the Open Government Licence v3.0, except where otherwise stated. School Nest uses the public downloads and does not scrape the service.

Nurseries and pre-schools are not part of Get Information About Schools. Their listings come from Ofsted's public register of early years providers in England. The nursery's name, Ofsted registration number, address, registration status and register type are taken from Ofsted's published record for that provider.

Before a nursery is published on School Nest, we read its current Ofsted record and check that it is open and on the Early Years Register. Any regulatory notice Ofsted shows for the provider is reviewed by a member of the School Nest team before the listing is published. Ofsted remains the official source: if a nursery's details change, please check its Ofsted record.

Where a nursery listing shows a website, it was supplied by the provider and has not been independently verified. It is not Ofsted information.

Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Source: Ofsted.

Ofsted does not endorse School Nest, and School Nest is not affiliated with Ofsted. We do not use the Ofsted logo or inspection grade logos.

A school can claim its listing. Once we have checked the claim, staff at that school can publish additional information — a description, admissions details, photographs, open days and news. This content belongs to the school and is clearly separate from official records. It is not checked for accuracy by the Department for Education, and publishing it does not change any official information.

The Department for Education publishes official school-level supporting data for coordinated primary and secondary admissions in England. School Nest currently uses the available history from 2014/15 onwards.

The data records how often a school appeared in families' first, second, third and total preferences, together with offers made. Where a school has separate entry points, such as Reception and Year 7, School Nest keeps them separate and never adds them together.

We also show the DfE's published comparison of first preferences with total offers. It indicates requests expressed through coordinated admissions, but it is not a School Nest score or a measure of school quality. Offers are not necessarily the same as a school's physical capacity, admissions arrangements vary, and these figures do not guarantee an individual child's chance of admission.

The dataset is released annually. Missing, not-applicable and suppressed values remain distinct from a genuine zero. Schools outside the relevant coordinated admissions collection may have no figures, including some independent schools, special settings and nurseries.

Source: Department for Education, Explore Education Statistics —Primary and secondary school applications and offers, academic year 2026/27. The underlying data files are released under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Ofsted publishes management information about the schools it inspects in England. School Nest uses two of those official releases: the monthly file covering state-funded schools, and the file covering non-association independent schools, which is published several times a year. We show what Ofsted publishes, in Ofsted's own words.

Ofsted changed how it inspects and reports in November 2025, so inspections belong to one of three periods:

• Up to August 2024 — inspections carried an overall effectiveness grade of Outstanding, Good, Requires improvement or Inadequate, alongside separate judgements.
• September 2024 to November 2025 — Ofsted did not give an overall effectiveness grade. Only the individual judgements exist, and we never calculate or infer an overall grade for this period.
• From November 2025 — report cards judge each evaluation area on a five-point scale: Exceptional, Strong standard, Expected standard, Needs attention, Urgent improvement. We reproduce this wording exactly and never turn it into numbers, stars or percentages.

Judgements made under different frameworks are not directly comparable, and School Nest never converts one framework's wording into another's.

Safeguarding is reported differently in each period, so we keep the official wording: report cards record whether safeguarding standards were Met or Not met, while earlier inspections recorded whether safeguarding was effective, Yes or No. For independent schools, compliance with the independent school standards is a separate regulatory check and is never shown as an inspection grade.

Where Ofsted records "Not applicable", "Not judged" or "Insufficient evidence", we show that exactly and never treat it as a poor result. Codes Ofsted uses internally to mean no judgement are never displayed as a grade. Where an inspection took place under a school's predecessor, we say so and never present it as a judgement about the school today.

Some independent schools are inspected by another approved body, most commonly the Independent Schools Inspectorate. Those schools have no Ofsted inspection record, which is not missing information.

These files give the latest published position plus relevant inspection activity from the current year. They are not a complete lifetime history of every inspection, and we never fill gaps with estimates. Records are matched to schools on official reference numbers; where identity is genuinely unclear, nothing is shown.

Ofsted judgements are not a School Nest score, and they never affect search order, placement or any ranking on School Nest. We do not use the Ofsted logo or inspection grade logos.

Source: Ofsted, published inspection management information. Contains Ofsted information available under the Open Government Licence where stated by the source publication. Ofsted logos and any third-party material are not included in that reuse permission.

School performance results come from the Department for Education's school performance data. We show end-of-primary (Key Stage 2), GCSE (Key Stage 4) and post-16 (Key Stage 5) results for the academic years 2022/23 to 2024/25, using only final or revised school-level releases, never provisional figures. Each result is labelled with the academic year it relates to.

Comparisons. The main comparison is the official England figure DfE publishes for the same year, measure and group of schools. Local-authority figures appear only in the detailed results. We never calculate averages ourselves. No colour, arrow or badge suggests better or worse.

Which schools have results. Most independent schools do not take part in primary national tests, so no primary section appears for them. Some publish GCSE or post-16 results. Special schools and alternative provision are shown in a simpler format, because national measures are designed for mainstream schools. Missing mainstream measures do not mean poor performance.

Schools that changed identity. When a school converts (for example to an academy), DfE may publish results under the previous school. We show these separately as “Previous school performance”, with the earlier school's name and year, and never as the current school's results.

Blank and withheld results. “Suppressed” and “Not published because of small pupil numbers” mean DfE withheld a figure to protect individual pupils. We never show or estimate it. “Not applicable” means the measure does not apply. “Not available in the published data” means DfE's file was blank. “Low coverage” means too few pupils had results for a reliable figure. A genuine zero is shown as 0. Where DfE gives the number of pupils included, we show it.

Progress measures. DfE did not publish primary progress measures for 2023/24 or 2024/25 because the required prior-attainment baseline was unavailable. Progress 8 was not published for 2024/25. Earlier progress figures are shown only with their year. Because of the pandemic, no national results exist for 2019/20 and 2020/21. We never fill gaps or join results across different measure versions.

School Nest does not create a performance score, grade or ranking. Performance does not affect search results or their order. DfE is moving these results to a replacement service, and we will keep using the official source wherever it is published. Source: Department for Education,Compare School and College Performance in England, and dataset-specific Explore Education Statistics releases where stated above. Content available under the Open Government Licence v3.0, except where otherwise stated; third-party material is not automatically covered.

The “School places” figures come from the Department for Education's School Capacity Survey, which local authorities complete each year. They are a snapshot on the survey's reference date (1 May), with pupils on roll taken from the May school census. We show only the latest survey year for each school.

What is shown. Capacity at the survey date, pupils on roll, and unfilled places at the survey date, exactly as DfE publishes them. Unfilled places at the survey date are not live vacancies and do not show whether a place is available now or how likely an offer is. We do not calculate occupancy, and we do not show published admission numbers, admission chances, forecasts or planned new places. Pupil forecasts are published for wider planning areas, not individual schools.

Which schools. The survey covers mainstream state-funded primary and secondary schools. Independent schools, special schools, nursery schools, pupil referral units and alternative provision, and 16–19 providers are not included, and schools that opened after the survey date have no figures yet. Where a school has no figures, no School places panel appears.

Changes over time. DfE changed how capacity is measured for 2024/25: for academies and free schools, measured building capacity was used where available instead of the capacity in their funding agreement. Because of this we do not show capacity trends or compare years. There was no survey in 2020 because of COVID-19.

Schools that changed identity or have several sites. Figures published under a previous school (for example before academy conversion) are not shown as the current school's figures. A few schools report separate figures for more than one site; we never add these together, and because the official records do not identify the sites for parents, we do not show them yet.

School details. The capacity and pupil numbers in each school's details come separately from Get Information About Schools and may differ because of timing and method. Neither is an error. A genuine zero is shown as 0; a blank official value is shown as “Not available in the published data”.

Source: Department for Education, Explore Education Statistics —School capacity, academic year 2024/25, based on the annual School Capacity (SCAP) survey as at 1 May 2025. The underlying data files are released under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Where we calculate something from official inputs, we say so. At present the only calculated value shown to families is the distance between a searched postcode or place and a school.

• Postcode coordinates come from the postcode centroid for the postcode you search, looked up through the Postcodes.io service, which is based on the Office for National Statistics Postcode Directory. See Postcode and location data.
• School coordinates come from the official grid reference published for each school, converted to latitude and longitude.
• The distance shown is straight-line (as the crow flies) distance between those two points.
• It is not a driving, walking or public transport distance, and it is not a guide to catchment areas or admission chances.
• Values are rounded for display — to one decimal place under ten miles, and to whole miles above that.

Postcode and place searches use Postcodes.io, an open-source lookup service whose source code is MIT licensed. The postcode data it returns is not simply covered by one licence: it contains Ordnance Survey, Royal Mail and National Statistics data, and Great Britain postcode data may be used under the OS OpenData licence.

For postcodes in Great Britain: Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right. Contains Royal Mail data © Royal Mail copyright and database right. Source: Office for National Statistics licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

School Nest currently covers schools in England and does not use Northern Ireland postcode data. Commercial use of Northern Ireland postcode data requires a licence from Northern Ireland Land & Property Services.

AI School Finder turns a written description into ordinary search filters, then searches School Nest's real school data. It does not invent schools or recommend one over another.

Ask School Nest AI answers questions using only the official information and school-published content we hold for that school.

AI Profile Assistant helps authorised school staff draft or polish profile text. A person at the school always decides whether to publish it.

AI can make mistakes and its answers are not guarantees. AI does not decide admissions, change official data, or give paying schools a better position. Please check important details with the school or the official source.

The Department for Education publishes updated school records every working day. School Nest checks for a new file each night and applies any changes, so official details normally reflect the source within a day. Information published by schools updates as soon as the school publishes it. Applications and offers data is updated when the Department for Education publishes its annual release and the new file has passed School Nest's validation checks. Nursery and pre-school details are checked against Ofsted's register when they are added and again before they are published; the nightly Department for Education update never changes them.

Where a value is not shown, it means the information has not been published for that school — not that the answer is zero or none. Some details apply only to certain types of school, and some schools have not yet added their own information.

If something looks wrong, please get in touch. Where the issue is in an official record, the Department for Education (or, for nurseries and pre-schools, Ofsted) is the source of the correction and the change reaches School Nest through the next update; we will point you to the right place. Where the issue is in information published by a school, we will raise it with the school.

School Nest is an independent service. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or operated on behalf of the Department for Education, Ofsted or any other government body. Paying for a School Nest subscription never changes search order or any official information shown about a school.

We expect to use further official datasets as School Nest develops. Any dataset we add will be described on this page, with its source and licence, at the point it first appears in the service — never before.

Each official dataset carries its own licence, stated with that source above. We do not assume that all government data is covered by the same licence.

• Get Information about Schools (Department for Education) — public bulk downloads, Open Government Licence v3.0, except where otherwise stated.
• Applications and offers (Department for Education, Explore Education Statistics) — underlying data files released under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
• Ofsted inspection management information (Ofsted) — Open Government Licence where stated by the source publication; Ofsted logos and third-party material excluded.
• Ofsted early years register (Ofsted) — nursery and pre-school listings, Open Government Licence v3.0; Ofsted logos excluded. See Nurseries and pre-schools.
• School performance (Department for Education) — Open Government Licence v3.0, except where otherwise stated.
• School capacity (Department for Education, Explore Education Statistics) — underlying data files released under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
• Postcode data via Postcodes.io — Ordnance Survey, Royal Mail and ONS credits as set out in Postcode and location data; not simply Open Government Licence.

Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Use of public-sector information does not imply endorsement of School Nest by the Department for Education, Ofsted, the Office for National Statistics, Ordnance Survey, Royal Mail, government departments or other public bodies. We do not use Crown or public-body logos.