Data Sources & Methodology

A complete account of the datasets, primary sources and methodologies behind every section of Al's EduDirectory. All world education statistics and school directory data are compiled from publicly available, authoritative sources. Last updated: 9 August 2026.

Overview

Al's EduDirectory draws on a combination of intergovernmental datasets, national government open data, and official education management information systems. No data is fabricated, estimated, or sourced from commercial data brokers. Where data is missing for a country or indicator, the field is left blank rather than substituted with a proxy.

This page describes each dataset used, its originating organisation, the indicators drawn from it, the country or territory coverage, and the most recent data year included. It covers the World Education page, the Global Schools Directory, and related enrichment sources.

Data Freshness & Update Cadence

How often each section of the platform is refreshed. All database updates are applied via versioned seed migrations to prevent duplicate processing; records are never overwritten without a version bump.

Live & Daily

Education Jobs — Multiple times daily
Procurement Intelligence — Continuously
Al's Edu Daily Briefing — Every weekday morning
Research Articles — Continuously — daily curation

Rolling — On Submission or Review

Events & CPD — Continuous
Books — Rolling
Podcasts & Newsletters — Rolling
Vendors / EdTech Suppliers — Rolling

Annual — Academic Cycle

England Schools (GIAS) — Annually + termly refresh
Scotland Schools — Contact Enrichment — Annually (on Scottish Government release)
England School Enrichment — Deprivation (IoD2025) — Annually (on MHCLG release)
England School Enrichment — KS4 Destinations — Annually (DfE EES release cycle)
England School Enrichment — KS5 Destinations — Annually (DfE EES release cycle)
England School Finances (FBIT — CFR & AAR) — Annually (Dec–Jan, on DfE FBIT release)
England School Technology Spending — CFR E20 sub-codes — Annually (with FBIT CFR release)
DfE Technology in Schools Survey 2024-25 — Biennial (next expected late 2027)
US Schools (NCES CCD / EDGE / CRDC / SAIPE) — Annually
US Private Schools (NCES PSS 2021-22) — Every 2 years (PSS release cycle)
Canada Schools — Annually
Australia Schools — Annually
New Zealand Schools — Annually
Ireland Schools — Annually
Spain Schools — Base Data (MEFP/RECED) — Annually
Spain Schools — National Overlay (Ownership, Geography & Contacts) — Annually
Spain Schools — Regional Supplementary Enrichment — Annually (on regional open data release)
Spain Schools — Canarias Teaching Offer — Annually (on Gobierno de Canarias release)
Spain Schools — Valencia FP Teaching Offer — Annually (on GVA Educació release)
Spain Schools — Catalunya Pupil History (Matricula) — Annually (on Generalitat release)
Spain Schools — Valencia FP Pupil History — Annually (on GVA Educació release)
Spain Schools — Erasmus+ KA120 Accreditation — Per call (2022, 2025 loaded; 2023–2024 pending)
Spain Schools — Catalunya Demand (Pre-enrolment) — Annually (Departament d'Educació, published for next academic year)
Spain Schools — XTEC Contact Enrichment (Cataluña) — Annually (on XTEC dataset release)
Spain Schools — Euskadi Teaching Offer (País Vasco) — Annually (on Open Data Euskadi release)
IB World Schools — Annually
International Network Memberships (AEFE / FOBISIA / AISA / BSO) — Annually
UK Independent Schools — Charity Commission (England & Wales) — Annually (on Charity Commission open data release)
UK Independent Schools — OSCR (Scotland) — Annually (on OSCR open data release)
UK Independent Schools — ISI Inspection Reports — Continuously (as ISI publishes)
Europe Schools — Annually
Other global schools — Annually (when source publishes)
Multi-Academy Trusts — Termly
UK Local Authorities — Annually
US School Districts — Annually
Universities & Colleges — Annually
UNESCO UIS (World Education) — Annually
UNDP HDI (World Education) — Annually
ITU ICT Data (World Education) — Annually
World Bank Learning Poverty — Annually (when updated)

Fixed — Major Assessment Cycles

OECD PISA (World Education) — Every 3 years
IEA TIMSS (World Education) — Every 4 years
IEA PIRLS (World Education) — Every 5 years
UNICEF MICS (World Education) — Country-by-country (every 3–5 years)
WHO/UNICEF JMP WASH in Schools — Every 2 years
World Bank CLO Database — Periodic (harmonised assessments)

World Education Page — Data Sources

The World Education page covers 215+ countries and territories. Each country profile draws on up to ten independent intergovernmental datasets. All data is held in a PostgreSQL database and updated when new releases are published by the originating organisations.

UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS)
OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)
IEA Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS)
IEA Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS)
UNDP Human Development Index (HDI)
ITU ICT Development Index / Digital Development Data
UNICEF Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS)
WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene (JMP) — Schools
World Bank Learning Poverty
World Bank Cross-Country Learning Outcomes (CLO) Database

Global Schools Directory — Data Sources

The Global Schools Directory contains 3.88 million+ individual school records across 200 countries and territories. Every record has been compiled, cleaned, deduplicated and enriched from primary government or official sources. No commercial data brokers have been used. All sources are open government data, intergovernmental datasets, or official ministry registries.

United Kingdom — 32,600+ schools

Sources: Get Information About Schools (GIAS), Department for Education (England) — UK Open Government Licence. Education Scotland school directory. StatsWales/Edubase (Wales). Northern Ireland Department of Education school register. Includes inspection ratings, local authority, phase of education, school type, religious character, gender classification, and contact details.

Ofsted Monthly Management Information — School Inspection Outcomes
Estyn Inspection Outcomes — Wales
ETI Inspection Reports — Northern Ireland
Scottish Government School Level Summary Statistics
Scottish Government School Contacts Directory

United States — 122,700+ schools

Base records: National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), Common Core of Data (CCD) 2024–25 (public schools) and Private School Universe Survey (PSS) 2021–22 (private schools). State-level enrichment from 50 state education departments including California CDE, Texas TEA, New York NYSED, Florida FLDOE, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts DESE. Charter school data from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. Private school accreditation from NAIS, Cognia (36,000+ institutions), ACSI, and CAPE. Bureau of Indian Education for approximately 180 tribal schools. Contact data enriched via OpenStreetMap (ODbL). Directory, enrollment, and profile fields for 101,921 public schools refreshed in June 2026 via a six-source V3 enrichment cycle. 20,816 private schools added in June 2026 from NCES PSS 2021–22.

US School Profile Enrichment — Phase 2 (Academic, Broadband & Poverty)

Individual US school profiles display academic, socioeconomic, and broadband data drawn from four federal open datasets. Fields appear only when data is available for that specific school, and values outside plausible ranges are suppressed rather than displayed.

NCES EDFacts — State Assessment Proficiency & Graduation Rates
E-Rate / FCC Schools and Libraries Programme
Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC)
Census Bureau SAIPE — Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates

US School Profile Enrichment — Phase 3 (Directory Refresh, Demographics & Staffing)

In June 2026, a further enrichment cycle updated directory fields, demographics, county, student-teacher ratios, and student support staffing for 101,921 US public schools across six sources — the most comprehensive single update to US school data since the platform launched.

NCES Common Core of Data (CCD) 2024–25 — School Directory
NCES Common Core of Data (CCD) 2023–24 — Membership & Characteristics
NCES Education Demographic and Geographic Estimates (EDGE) 2024–25
Texas Education Agency AskTED School Directory

US School Profile Enrichment — Phase 4 (NCES PSS Private Schools)

NCES Private School Universe Survey (PSS) 2021–22

Canada — 19,100+ schools

Sources: Statistics Canada ODEF v2.1 with provincial open data from Ontario, Alberta, BC, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, PEI, and Yukon government portals. Ontario School Information System, BC School Directory, Alberta Education ISSD, Quebec Répertoire des Établissements, CAIS. Open Government Licence — Canada.

Australia — 11,150 schools

Source: ACARA School Profile (MySchool Data Access Program 2025, CC BY 4.0), enriched in 2026 with the NSW Department of Education master dataset (CC BY 4.0 — selective-entry status, opportunity classes, specialty streams, attached preschools, intensive English centres, FOEI, SA4 statistical regions and refreshed ICSEA, enrolment and language-background figures for all 2,210 government schools), the Queensland Government open-data school register (phone numbers, websites and street addresses), and the South Australian Department for Education education-sites register (principals, websites and site details). A second 2026 wave folded in the harmonised national bundle: the Victorian 2025 school register (government, Catholic and independent), the Western Australian Semester 1 2026 census, the Tasmanian, ACT and Northern Territory school directories — sector tags, street addresses, phone numbers and principals across every state and territory. A third wave completed the picture: the ACT's ACTmapi School Location 2026 layer (CC BY 4.0) replaced the older archive with current phone numbers, emails and websites, the ACNC Charity Register (CC BY 3.0 AU) confirmed 213 non-government schools as registered charities, Wikidata (CC0) supplied school websites where states publish none — each passing a state-domain sanity check — and the Victorian Feb-2025 enrolments workbook and Western Australian 2026 census re-parse added enrolment figures. Remoteness classifications now follow a single ABS scale across the directory.

New Zealand — 2,500+ schools

Source: New Zealand Ministry of Education school directory (Education Counts), published under the New Zealand Government Open Access and Licensing framework (NZGOAL). Includes school type, decile, roll size, authority, and contact information.

Ireland — 4,000+ schools

Source: Department of Education Ireland school register, published under the PSI Open Data Licence. Covers primary, secondary, and special schools in the Republic of Ireland, including roll number, school type, patron body, gender, and contact details.

Spain — 25,000+ schools

Base records: Registro Estatal de Centros Docentes (RECED), Ministerio de Educación, Formación Profesional y Deportes (MEFP). 25,083 schools across all 17 autonomous communities, covering public, private, and state-funded private (concertada) schools. Enriched with regional open data and individual contact data from Cataluña's XTEC open dataset.

Registro Estatal de Centros Docentes (RECED)
Spain National Schools Rebuild — June 2026 (nine autonomous communities)
Madrid Bilingual Programmes — Opciones Lingüísticas
XTEC Centres Docents — Open Dataset (kvmv-ahh4)
Spain Regional Supplementary Enrichment — Cataluña, Andalucía, Canarias, País Vasco
Euskadi Teaching Offer — Especialidades o Modalidades Impartidas en los Centros
Canarias Teaching Offer — Enseñanzas Impartidas en Centros Docentes

Europe — 390,000+ schools (excluding Spain)

Sources: Eurostat GISCO school dataset and national ministry registries across 28+ countries, including France (annuaire-de-l'éducation), Italy (MIUR), Finland (Vipunen), Germany (state Kultusministerien), Portugal (DGEEC), Greece (IPODE), Poland (SIO), Romania, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Baltic states, Nordic countries, Benelux, Austria, and Switzerland.

East Asia

Sources: National ministry registries and official EMIS systems for China, Japan (MEXT), South Korea (KEDI), Taiwan, Mongolia, and Hong Kong.

Southeast Asia

Sources: Indonesia — Dapodik (Data Pokok Pendidikan), the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research and Technology's national EMIS, covering 400,000+ schools at all levels. Vietnam (MOET), Philippines (EBEIS), Thailand, Malaysia, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, and Singapore national EMIS systems.

South Asia

Sources: India — UDISE+ (Unified District Information System for Education Plus), the national school census published by the Ministry of Education covering 1.4 million+ schools; supplemented by CBSE affiliation data. Pakistan (NEMIS), Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal national education statistics.

Middle East & North Africa

Sources: National ministry systems including Saudi Arabia (Noor), Turkey (e-Okul), Iran (ESIS), Egypt, Iraq, UAE, Jordan, Morocco, and Tunisia official school registries.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Sources: National EMIS systems for 40+ countries, UNESCO UIS administrative data, and where available, World Bank Education Statistics open data.

Latin America & Caribbean

Sources: Brazil (INEP Censo Escolar), Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Peru, Mexico, and 15+ additional national ministry school registries.

International & IB World Schools

Sources: UK DfE British Schools Overseas (BSO) Register — officially registered British international schools worldwide. IB World Schools — schools authorised to offer one or more of the International Baccalaureate programmes (PYP, MYP, DP, CP), sourced from the IB Organisation's public school directory, covering 8,769 schools in 165 countries following the August 2026 Profile Plus refresh. That refresh updated 3,148 existing IB records with their current programme line-up, IB authorisation date and IBO profile code; added 2,207 IB World Schools that were missing from the directory entirely; and matched and enriched 3,284 further schools by name. Fill-only regional contact enrichment passes (Middle East, Asia, Africa & the Americas, Europe & Oceania — completed August 2026) also filled missing website, email and address details on around 3,800 international school records; these passes never overwrite existing values, never import telephone numbers, and never create new records.

International school network memberships (added August 2026): AEFE — the French state agency's worldwide register of homologated schools (aefe.fr), 527 schools badged, each carrying its official UAI reference code; FOBISIA — the Federation of British International Schools in Asia member directory (fobisia.org), 78 schools; AISA — the Association of International Schools in Africa member directory (aisa.or.ke), 37 schools; and the UK DfE British Schools Overseas (BSO) published inspection list (gov.uk), 39 schools. The import added 443 school profiles not previously listed and badged 230 existing profiles. Matching was deliberately conservative: candidates that could not be matched unambiguously were held back rather than guessed (109 held for review), and three entries in territories with disputed status were not imported.

Global Education Directory

The Global Education Directory lists 900 organisations worldwide — government ministries, regulators, exam boards and assessment bodies, EdTech and professional associations, higher-education quality assurance bodies, multilateral programmes and education NGOs. The baseline register was compiled from official organisation websites; a research-led master update (August 2026) added 127 organisations and enriched 111 existing profiles with headquarters, geographic coverage, primary audiences, thematic focus and an explicit provenance trail — every researched change stores its source URL, confidence level and verification date.

Curriculum & Exam Boards

The Curriculum & Exam Boards reference lists 134 curricula and 180 exam boards, awarding bodies, regulators and assessment providers across 80+ countries. The register launched in April 2026 with 93 exam boards compiled from official awarding-body websites; a research-led expansion (August 2026) added 88 organisations and enriched every profile with headquarters, founding year, legal form, parent organisation, and Wikidata and Wikipedia references. Each entry carries an explicit verification label. Structural corrections from the same review include merging a duplicate South African listing, separating regulators (Ofqual, Qualifications Wales, SQA Accreditation, Umalusi, QQI, SAQA, QCTO, BQA) into their own category, and recording the SQA's transition to Qualifications Scotland.

Contact data enrichment — England

Email and telephone contact records for English schools have been enriched in three rounds of data imports (v1, v2, v3) drawing on approximately 25,400+ school contact records. The most recently matched round (April 2026) covered 24,918 matched schools. Contact data for all nations is derived from official GIAS, GIAS extract files, and government-published contact registers only.

England School Profile Enrichment — Phase A (May 2026)

From May 2026, individual English school profiles are enriched with contextual performance and deprivation data drawn from four additional DfE and MHCLG open datasets. These fields appear directly on school cards and only display when data is available for that specific school.

English Indices of Deprivation 2025 (IoD2025) — IMD & IDACI
KS4 Pupil Destinations (Year 11 leavers)
KS5 Pupil Destinations (Year 13 leavers)
Pupil Absence Rates

England School Finances — FBIT (2024-25)

Individual English school profiles display school-level financial data sourced from the DfE's Financial Benchmarking and Insights Tool (FBIT). Data covers 22,262 state-funded schools (11,580 LA maintained via CFR; 11,686 academies via AAR). Both workbooks are published annually under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

FBIT CFR Workbook — LA Maintained Schools
FBIT AAR Workbook — Academies
DfE Technology in Schools Survey 2024-25
Consistent Financial Reporting (CFR) Framework — E20 Code Definitions
DfE School and College Performance Tables — KS4 School-Level Data

England & Scotland Independent School Enrichment — Charity & Inspection Data (June 2026)

UK independent schools registered as charities are enriched with financial and inspection data from three additional sources. These fields appear on individual school profiles where a match is confirmed by charity registration number (England and Wales) or charity number (Scotland).

Charity Commission for England and Wales — Register of Charities
Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR) — Scottish Charity Register
Independent Schools Inspectorate (ISI) — Inspection Reports

Multi-Academy Trust Directory — Data Sources

The Multi-Academy Trust directory covers 2,200+ MATs operating in England. Each trust profile is compiled from four primary sources: the DfE's school register (GIAS), the national performance tables, the Financial Benchmarking and Insights Tool (FBIT), and Companies House. All sources are published under the Open Government Licence v3.0 or are Crown Copyright.

Get Information About Schools (GIAS) — Trust Register
DfE School and College Performance Tables — Trust-level KS4 and KS2
FBIT AAR — Trust-level Financial Aggregates
Companies House — Incorporation Data

Other Directory Data Sources

Universities & Colleges (5,200+)

Sources: HESA (UK), IPEDS (US), UNESCO WHED (World Higher Education Database), and national university directories. QS World University Rankings (2025) for Top 500 classification. In August 2026 the directory was reconciled against the Research Organization Registry (ROR v2.11, CC0): 3,586 institutions now carry verified ROR, Wikidata and OpenAlex identifiers with Wikipedia references, records researched as merged, renamed or misclassified were corrected with predecessor names preserved, and student numbers for Cambridge, Oxford and Lund now state the year, basis and official university source behind them. A country-by-country completeness ledger tracks directory coverage against the recognised higher-education universe.

Research Organization Registry (ROR) v2.11
OpenAlex Institution IDs
Wikidata IDs & Wikipedia references
Official university student statistics (dated counts)

UK Local Authorities (218)

Sources: GOV.UK Local Authority Data, DfE Director of Children's Services published list, ONS population estimates. In August 2026 all 218 authority profiles (England 153, Scotland 32, Wales 22, Northern Ireland 11) were further enriched with school structure, attainment, population and deprivation data from the official sources below. Official ONS GSS codes were added to every authority, and each figure on an authority profile carries a small-print label identifying which source supplied it.

GIAS — Local Authority School Structure & Academisation (England)
KS2 & KS4 Attainment by Local Authority (2024/25 revised)
ONS Mid-Year Population Estimates & GSS Codes
National Indices of Deprivation — IMD 2019, SIMD 2020, WIMD 2019 & NIMDM 2017
Devolved School Registers — Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland

Global Education Organisations

Sources: UNESCO member state ministry contacts, OECD country pages, and manually curated directory of education ministries, regulatory bodies, exam boards and associations.

US School Districts (18,500+)

Base records: NCES Common Core of Data (CCD) 2024–25 Local Education Agency universe — enrollment, grade span, websites, and contact information. Enriched in June 2026 from four additional federal sources: Census Bureau F-33 Survey of School System Finances (FY2023) — total revenue, federal/state/local revenue split, total expenditure, per-pupil expenditure, and a nine-category spending breakdown, covering 13,032 districts; NCES EDFacts (2018–19 / 2020–21) — four-year adjusted cohort graduation rate and state assessment proficiency rates (values at or below 5% suppressed as NCES data-suppression categories; graduation rates below 20% similarly suppressed); Census SAIPE 2023 — district-level child poverty rate; NCES CCD grade span — lowest and highest grade served.

Education Jobs

Aggregated from 31 live feed sources and 90 partner job boards including Teaching Vacancies (GOV.UK), Kent-Teach, Tes Jobs, Hays Education, jobs.ac.uk and Teacher Horizons (live international school vacancies across 50+ countries). Jobs are pulled, deduplicated and refreshed daily.

Procurement & Contract Intelligence

The Procurement Hub aggregates education-sector contract notices and framework agreements from UK public procurement portals, refreshed continuously: Find a Tender Service (FTS) — the UK Government's above-threshold procurement portal, filtered for education-related notices; Contracts Finder — Cabinet Office portal for below-threshold UK public contracts; Public Contracts Scotland; eTendersNI; Sell2Wales; Scottish Procurement Frameworks; HE Portals — aggregated higher education and public sector contract notices; Get Help Buying for Schools (DfE); ESPO; YPO; DfE Grants; and EduSignals / Apex Purchasing. All procurement data is sourced from official public portals. Records are not redistributed commercially and are used solely to surface relevant opportunities to education sector professionals on this platform.

Research Library (3,500+ articles)

Curated manually by Al Kingsley MBE and the editorial team. Each article is reviewed before inclusion. Sources include academic journals, education media, government publications, and sector reports. No AI-generated content is included in the article library.

Journey Calculator & Jobs Near Me — Geolocation

Postcode lookup and reverse geolocation are powered by Postcodes.io, a free and open-source API built on Royal Mail and ONS postcode data. Used exclusively for the Journey Calculator on England school profiles and for the Jobs Near Me feature. No user location data is stored. Postcodes.io is published under the MIT licence and the underlying postcode data is Crown Copyright.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the largest school database in the world?
How many countries are covered in the World Education page?
What sources power the world education dataset?
How accurate is the school coverage data?
Is any of the data estimated or modelled?
How is the data updated?
Who maintains this data?

Attribution

All third-party datasets remain the intellectual property of their originating organisations. UNESCO UIS data is used under the UNESCO Open Access policy. OECD data is used under the OECD terms of use. UK government data is used under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Where sources impose specific attribution requirements, those requirements are honoured. The compilation, enrichment, and presentation layer is © 2026 K4 Consulting Limited.

To cite this page: Source: Al's EduDirectory (edudirectory.school), 2026. Data Sources & Methodology. https://edudirectory.school/data-sources/

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