The Schools area of Nexus enables you to record and hold information about schools and settings in your Local Authority.
In many Local Authorities, some of this information is usually stored in spreadsheets and lists, but the Nexus Schools area plays a key role in the wider system. It is here that the information about your schools is defined and managed, including school names, contact details, types and identifying numbers, as well as presenting users with automatically populated information such as census analysis.
Accessing the Schools area and initial options
Articles in this section will take you through the offering and functionality of the Schools area of Nexus, which is accessed via the 'Schools' item in the main menu bar.
On selecting this menu item, you will be taken to a full list of all of the schools in your Local Authority. By default, these will be Open Schools, and 'All Schools' will be selected as the default grouping.
You'll note that there is an 'Add School' button; this is discussed in more detail in this article.
Filters
Filter Options available on this page include - note that all filters applied are cumulative.
- LA - If you needed to see the list of schools for another Local Authority, you can switch that here. (Please note that you will only see publicly available information about another LA's schools and nothing that the LA has input in terms of gradings, judgements or other information.)
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School Status - you can select from the following self-explanatory options:
- Only Open Schools
- Only Closed Schools
- Open & Closed Schools
- Group - for your own LA, you can select from any school grouping that has been set up in Nexus, though the default is 'All Schools' (which is applied for any other LA). Please note that this is affected by your selection in 'School Status'. For more on School Groups, see this article.
- Search - you can start typing in the box with name, DfE No or URN to narrow the search down
- School Type - this selection lets you be very precise in your selection of the type of school. Use the arrow beside a type to select from sub-types
- School Phase - also allows you to be very precise in your phase selections. Once again, the arrow beside primary allows you to drill down to sub-types
By clicking on the 'More Filters' control, you can also select from filters for:
- LA Category
- LA Grade
- LA Target Grade
- RAG
Each of the above filters will only offer options if your Local Authority has opted to set them up through the Admin menu. The use of these options is described in articles within this section and listed at the bottom of this page.
Hit Search when the filters are selected to apply them.
Reset - allows you to remove all filters that have been applied.
Exporting
You have the option to export schools using the 'Export List' button. There are two versions of this export.
Schools List: This option includes basic school information, such as name and URN, along with details used to categorise each school, including LA Category, Grade, RAG and Tags.
Ofsted Reports: To see the latest inspection data for all your schools, you'll want to use this export, which includes inspections carried out under the Education Inspection Framework (EIF), as well as inspections from all previous frameworks conducted before November 2025 within your LA. Data is provided on separate sheets: a ‘2025 EIF’ sheet and a 'Pre 2025’ sheet for all previous frameworks.
Selecting a school from the filtered list
Just click the hyperlinked name of the school you wish to see more details on to jump to its specific page. That is discussed in this article.