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DfE’s statistics are open data: there is no account and no API key. You switch the integration on once at the MSP level, so your agents can read it.

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1. Switch it on in Neo

1

Open Integrations

Open Integrations → DfE Education Statistics in the Neo Dashboard. The card is under Other.
2

Save

Choose Enabled under Access and click Save. Neo calls DfE’s API once before it saves, to check that it answers.

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2. Store each school’s URN

The URN is DfE’s six-digit school number. You can look one up on Get Information about Schools. Store it on each school client in your PSA, for example in a custom field, or list the schools and their URNs in the agent’s instructions. When a school has no URN, the agent can look its name up in DfE’s school list, and asks a technician to confirm the match before it uses it.

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3. Set up the monthly agent

Set up a scheduled agent that runs once a month. Open it from Agents, go to its Tools & Settings tab, click Other, and set the DfE Education Statistics block’s Published Statistics to Read Only. Give it your PSA’s group for the billing record at Read / Write: on Halo, Invoices for a recurring invoice, Contracts for a contract, or Companies for a field on the client. In its instructions, name the record and the field that holds the pupil count, and where the agent finds each school’s URN. The agent writes a number only when it differs from the one the record holds, and lists in its summary every school it could not update, with the reason. See DfE Education Statistics API for what the agent reads.