Getting started
The explore education statistics (EES) API provides a way to directly consume published data from the EES service using HTTP.
Note that to provide a consistent, reliable structure, not all data sets available in EES are accessible via the API. For a full list of data sets published by EES, visit the EES data catalogue on the main website. If there are any data sets you would like to see added to the API, please contact our explore education statistics team or the specific contact details of the publisher of the data you are interested in.
To get started with the EES API, you’ll need either:
- an API client such as Postman or Insomnia if you are exploring the API
- an HTTP client in the programming language of your choice if you are developing on top of the API
The documentation on this website will assume a level of familiarity with how HTTP, web APIs and REST work. You should research these topics prior to using the EES API if you are not familiar with them.
It is recommended that you start with the Quick start guide if you are new to the EES API. This will guide you through essential parts of the API and the workflow to perform a basic data set query.
The Overview section is a good next step for a more in-depth understanding of the high level parts of the EES API.
To assist in specific tasks once you’ve started using the EES API, there are additional guides under Getting started in the navigation menu that you may find useful.
Documentation structure
The Overview section provides high level documentation about the EES API. This details things such as message formats, error handling, versioning and the OpenAPI specification.
The Endpoints section provides reference documentation about the endpoints available in the API. This details the requests that can be made and their responses. Code samples are also provided to illustrate how requests could be made.
The Schemas section provides reference documentation about the structure of all the requests and responses (i.e. their schemas) across the API. Each schema provides in-depth detail about their properties, including their type and validation rules.
The building API integrations page provides information about software development kits (SDKs) that have been created to streamline common tasks and communication with the API, including software specific guidance for R, PowerBI and Python.