Explore Education Statistics: finding official school data for England

Explore Education Statistics (EES) is the Department for Education's official service for publishing statistics on schools, pupils, teachers, exam results, children's social care and further and higher education in England. It holds every DfE statistical release with its data files, a table builder, a data catalogue and a free API. Fact-checkers use it to check claims about pupil numbers, free school meals, class sizes, teacher numbers, GCSE and key stage 2 results, exclusions and attendance.

Covers: England · Release calendar

What it publishes

Schools, pupils and their characteristics: pupil numbers from the January school census by school type, age, sex, ethnicity, English as an additional language, free school meals eligibility and class size, down to individual schools.
School workforce in England: teacher and support staff numbers in full-time equivalent and headcount, pupil to teacher ratios, pay, vacancies, sickness absence, and teachers joining and leaving, from the November workforce census.
Key stage 4 performance: GCSE-level measures such as Attainment 8, the share of pupils achieving grade 5 or above in English and maths, and English Baccalaureate entry, by pupil characteristics and area.
Key stage 2 attainment: the share of pupils reaching the expected standard in reading, writing and maths at the end of primary school, published first as provisional figures and later revised.
Suspensions and permanent exclusions: counts and rates per 10,000 pupils by reason, school type and pupil characteristics, for each academic year and each term.
Pupil attendance in schools: fortnightly estimates drawn from daily registers shared automatically by participating schools, alongside the accredited termly and annual pupil absence statistics.
Special educational needs and education, health and care plans, school funding, school capacity, post-16 results and destinations, and children's social care.
Underlying CSV files for every release, a data catalogue to search them, and a 'Create your own tables' tool that lets users build and download custom tables.

Key datasets

Schools, pupils and their characteristics
Pupil and school numbers in England from the January census, including free school meals eligibility, ethnicity, first language and class sizes, at national, regional, local authority and school level. Long time series.
Updated: Annual (June)
School workforce in England
Teachers, teaching assistants and other staff in state-funded schools, with pupil to teacher ratios, recruitment, retention, vacancies and pay, based on the November census.
Updated: Annual (June)
Key stage 4 performance
GCSE and equivalent results for pupils at the end of key stage 4 in England by school type, local authority, sex, disadvantage and other characteristics.
Updated: Annual (recent editions published in the spring after the exams, with later updates)
Key stage 2 attainment
Results of national curriculum assessments at the end of primary school in England, including the expected and higher standards in reading, writing and maths, by pupil group and area.
Updated: Annual (provisional in September, revised later in the academic year)
Suspensions and permanent exclusions in England
Accredited official statistics on suspensions and permanent exclusions by reason, school phase, local authority and pupil characteristics, given as counts and rates.
Updated: Annual (July), plus separate autumn term and spring term releases
Pupil attendance in schools
Fortnightly estimates of attendance and absence by reason, phase and area from daily data automatically shared by participating schools. Figures are estimates and can change as more schools' data arrive.
Updated: Fortnightly during term time
Pupil absence in schools in England
Accredited official statistics on overall, authorised, unauthorised and persistent absence by reason and pupil characteristics, based on the school census.
Updated: Termly and full academic year
Special educational needs in England
Numbers of pupils with SEN support and with education, health and care plans, by type of need, school type and area, from the January census.
Updated: Annual (June)
Compare school and college performance
DfE service showing published performance measures and other information for individual schools and colleges in England, with downloadable data.
Updated: Updated as each attainment release is published
Get information about schools
The DfE register of schools, colleges and academy trusts in England with unique reference numbers (URNs), status, type, opening and closing dates and trust membership.
Updated: Continuously updated register
Ofsted state-funded schools inspections and outcomes
Ofsted's official statistics on inspections of maintained schools and academies in England, plus monthly management information. Outcomes since 10 November 2025 follow the renewed inspection framework.
Updated: Official statistics periodically; management information monthly
Ofqual Analytics
Interactive visualisations from Ofqual, the exams regulator, on GCSE, AS and A level outcomes and other regulated qualifications in England.
Updated: Annual, with results-day updates

APIs and downloads

Explore education statistics API
Free REST API returning JSON, with endpoints to list publications and data sets, read metadata, query a data set by filters, locations and time periods, and download a whole data set as gzip-compressed CSV. No API key was required when checked. Only a subset of EES data sets is available through the API.
EES API: list of publications with API data sets
JSON list of the publications that currently have API-enabled data sets, such as pupil absence, key stage 4 performance and school pupils and their characteristics. Paginated.
Data catalogue
Search and download the CSV files behind every EES release, with metadata files explaining each column. Covers far more data sets than the API.
Create your own tables (table tool)
Step-by-step table builder: choose a publication and data set, filter by geography, time and indicator, then download the table as CSV or spreadsheet or copy a permanent link.
Get information about schools downloads
Downloadable CSV extracts of establishment and group records from the register of schools and academy trusts.

When it publishes

DfE pre-announces its statistics on the GOV.UK research and statistics calendar, and releases go live on Explore Education Statistics at 9:30am. Most school statistics follow the academic year: pupil characteristics, workforce and SEN in June, exclusions in July and key stage 2 provisional results in September, with revised key stage 2 figures and the key stage 4 performance release following in the spring. Attendance estimates are published fortnightly during term. Each release page shows its publication date and any later updates.

How to use it to check a claim

Start from the publication's headline page, then use 'Explore data and files' or the table tool to get the exact figure, and cite the release by its academic year and publication date.
Check whether a figure is provisional or revised; key stage 2 results change between the September provisional release and the later revised one as schools' amendments are applied, and the release page states which version you are reading.
For free school meals, distinguish eligibility (pupils known to be eligible on census day) from take-up of a meal, and from universal infant free school meals, which cover all pupils in reception to year 2.
For teacher numbers, check whether a claim uses full-time equivalent or headcount, and whether it covers qualified teachers only or all teachers in state-funded schools.
For attendance, use the accredited pupil absence statistics for settled termly or annual figures, and the fortnightly attendance estimates only for recent trends, noting they are based on participating schools.
For a single school, use Compare school and college performance and Get information about schools, and check the school's URN, because academies that convert or merge get new reference numbers.
For exam grade distributions and comparisons with previous years, check Ofqual's statistics, since DfE performance measures count pupils in schools rather than all entries.

Common mistakes

Progress 8 was not calculated for 2024/25 and 2025/26 because the cohorts had no key stage 2 test results after the 2020 and 2021 tests were cancelled, so school progress comparisons for those years are not available.
Results from 2020 and 2021 used centre or teacher assessed grades and are not directly comparable with exam years.
Exclusion and suspension rates are per 10,000 pupils (or a percentage), while counts are totals; changes in pupil numbers affect counts without any change in the rate.
Pupil to teacher ratio and average class size are different measures and give different numbers.
Ofsted inspection outcomes changed format when the renewed framework began on 10 November 2025, so grade counts from before and after are not directly comparable.
Education statistics on this service cover England only; Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland publish their own figures with different measures.

How many pupils in England are eligible for free school meals?

The figure is in the DfE's 'Schools, pupils and their characteristics' release on Explore Education Statistics, published each June using the January school census. It gives the number and percentage of pupils known to be eligible for free school meals nationally and for each region, local authority and school. Take-up on census day and universal infant free school meals are reported separately.

Does the Explore Education Statistics API need a key?

No key was needed when we checked. The API at api.education.gov.uk/statistics returns JSON, can filter data sets by location, time period and indicator, and can download a whole data set as CSV. Not every data set on the website is available through it; the data catalogue lists all downloadable files, including those not yet in the API.

Where do I find GCSE results for a particular school?

Use the DfE's Compare school and college performance service, which shows key stage 4 measures such as Attainment 8 and the share of pupils achieving grade 5 or above in English and maths for each school, alongside national and local averages. The data behind it also appears in the key stage 4 performance release on Explore Education Statistics, which has school-level files.

How often are school attendance figures published?

The DfE publishes pupil attendance estimates fortnightly during term time, based on daily register data shared by participating schools. These are official statistics but are estimates that can change. Settled figures come from the accredited pupil absence statistics, published for the autumn term, the autumn and spring terms, and the full academic year.

Questions answered using this source

Links checked 2026-10-13. This page describes what the source publishes and gives no verdict on any claim.