# London School Data AI Agent Connect > London Schools: Estate, Distances & Cross-Border Mobility provides direct access to four official London education datasets. Use your AI client to query the 2016 school estate, analyze pupil travel distance trends from 2010 to 2016, check home-to-school distance benchmarks, and examine 2011 census cross-border mobility data. ## Overview - **Category:** education - **Price:** Free - **Endpoint:** https://edge.vinkius.com/vk_preview_6lJgF3vHfoGYkx8Rg4XpSsAK576F9f0ZStRr4EBV/ai-agent-connect - **Tags:** london, united-kingdom, schools, education, pupils, travel-distance, census, keyless ## Description This MCP gives your AI client direct access to official London open-data datasets. You can pull specific details on the 2016 school estate, including URNs, coordinates, and local authority info, or look up specific schools by name or ID. If you need to analyze how far students are traveling, the tool provides distance trends from 2010 to 2016, including mean distances and percentiles. You can also investigate how many children live in a borough versus how many attend state schools outside of it using 2011 census mobility data. The data is pre-cleaned, so you don't have to worry about the trailing null columns or extra header rows found in the raw files. It is built for researchers and planners who need to move from raw data to specific insights without manual cleaning. ## Tools ### count_schools This tool counts London schools and provides breakdowns by phase and status. ### cross_border_mobility This tool provides primary school mobility data by resident borough, sorted by the number of resident children. ### home_school_distances This tool calculates the share of London pupils living far from their school based on borough and phase filters. ### list_schools This tool retrieves London school records including addresses, coordinates, and status using filters for local authority or phase. ### school_distance_trends This tool pulls pupil travel distance series from 2010 to 2016 for a specific school using its URN or name. ### school_lookup This tool finds specific London schools using a URN or a name substring. ### schools_by_borough This tool returns the number of schools found within each London local authority. ### schools_overview This tool provides a citywide snapshot of the entire London school estate. ## Prompt Examples **Prompt:** ``` How many open primary schools are in Camden? ``` **Response:** ``` The count_schools tool returns the total for Camden, along with specific splits for Primary phase and Open status. ``` **Prompt:** ``` Show the travel distances for Argyle Primary School. ``` **Response:** ``` Using school_distance_trends for Argyle Primary School provides the 2010 to 2016 series, including mean distance and the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentiles. ``` **Prompt:** ``` Which borough has the highest cross-border primary-school mobility? ``` **Response:** ``` Running cross_border_mobility shows the share of children attending school outside their home borough, allowing you to identify the highest mobility areas. ``` ## Capabilities ### School Estate Mapping Your agent can retrieve exact WGS84 coordinates and ward information for any school in the 2016 dataset. ### Distance Trend Analysis Your AI client can track how pupil travel distances changed between 2010 and 2016 for specific schools. ### Borough Mobility Studies Your agent can compare resident child counts against state school attendance to measure cross-border movement. ### Catchment Pressure Assessment Your AI client can identify the share of pupils traveling beyond standard distances for their phase. ### Automated Data Cleaning Your agent receives clean data without the trailing nulls or extra header rows present in the original source. ## Use Cases ### Analyzing School Catchments Use the distance tools to see how many students in a specific borough travel beyond the standard distance for their phase. ### Tracking Urban Mobility Identify which boroughs have the highest rates of children attending state schools outside their home area. ### School Location Research Retrieve precise WGS84 coordinates and local authority details for any school in the 2016 estate. ### Longitudinal Distance Studies Pull a six-year series of travel distance percentiles for a single school to observe changing patterns. ## Benefits - Access official London open-data without manual file downloading and cleaning. - Query specific school coordinates and URNs directly through your AI client. - Analyze multi-year travel distance trends from 2010 to 2016. - Compare borough-level school attendance and mobility using census data. ## How It Works Connect your AI client to Vinkius to access the London Datastore tools instantly. 1. Connect your MCP-compatible client to Vinkius. 2. Ask your AI client to find a school or count schools in a specific borough. 3. The agent calls the relevant tool to pull data from the London open-data sets. 4. The agent processes the cleaned data and presents the answer to you. ## Frequently Asked Questions **What years does the school distance data cover?** The travel distance trends cover the period from 2010 to 2016. **Is the school estate data recent?** The school estate data is a snapshot from 2016. **What kind of coordinates are provided?** The tools provide WGS84 coordinates for schools in the estate. **Can I search for schools by name?** Yes, you can use the school_lookup tool to find schools by name or URN. **Does this include census data?** Yes, the cross_border_mobility tool uses 2011 census data to show how many children live and attend school in different boroughs. **Do I need an API key?** No. data.london.gov.uk publishes every dataset as an anonymous file download (CSV or Excel). This MCP defines no credentials and needs nothing configured. **Which year is the school estate from?** The estate extract is a 2016 snapshot. That vintage is stated in every tool title that reads it — list_schools, count_schools and the borough ranking all say 2016 extract in the title. **What do the distance percentiles mean?** For a given school and year, the pupils field is how many attend, and the q25/median/q75 plus mean fields are the kilometres the pupils travel to get there — the 25th, 50th and 75th percentile of that distribution. Both series run 2010 to 2016. **What is cross-border mobility?** From the 2011 census: for each borough, how many of the children who live there attend a state school, and what share of them attend one outside their home borough. The table has one row per borough plus a London row, with children counts, state-school counts and the share attending outside the home borough.