API Early Childhood Centres and Schools

Two APIs have been developed to allow access to details on New Zealand’s education institutions; an early childhood education Directory API and a Schooling Directory API.

Using APIs

Click here to go to the data.govt.nz Data Explorer for the Early Childhood Education Directory API.
Click here to go to the data.govt.nz Data Explorer for the School Directory API.

Details are included on the data.govt.nz site regarding downloading this dataset, as well as further information related to using APIs to facilitate more in-depth querying capabilities.

These files can also be accessed via the data.govt.nz Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). Among other things the APIs can assist you to:

  • combine the data with other datasets
  • make real-time calls to the datasets to make sure you’ve got the most recent data
  • provide a link from your application to a dataset on Data.govt.nz

An API offers a series of actions, such as

  • resource metadata show - Gets the metadata of a specific data resource.  The data resource download link, last updated date, etc. can be retrieved.
  • Datastore search sql - Execute SQL queries on the DataStore to search data in a resource or connect multiple resources with join expressions.

The data.govt.nz DataStore API allows you to access and query the rows and columns of raw data listed by agencies in machine readable format via a JSON API endpoint.  For SQL queries this endpoint is  https://catalogue.data.govt.nz/api/action/datastore_search_sql and the data sources for the ?sql= parameter are identified by Resource IDs, shown in the table below:

ResourceID
ECE Directory 26f44973-b06d-479d-b697-8d7943c97c57
Schools Directory bdfe0e4c-1554-4701-a8fe-ba1c8e0cc2ce


For Instance, a request to: https://catalogue.data.govt.nz/api/3/action/datastore_search_sql?sql=SELECT * FROM"bdfe0e4c-1554-4701-a8fe-ba1c8e0cc2ce" will return all rows and columns from the Schools Directory dataset.

NB: The data in Ministry datasets contain macrons, so the query needs macrons as well!  That is, specifying the column “Māori” as “Maori” will fail with a complaint that no such column exists.

Many of the datasets that the Ministry maintains in data.govt.nz are being converted to resources accessible through the APIs and this documentation will be amended as that conversion proceeds.

Further technical documentation is available at https://docs.ckan.org/en/2.7/maintaining/datastore.html#the-datastore-api.

ECE Description of Variables

Schooling Description of Variables

Additional Notes

Schooling Organisations

As well as open schools this directory shows proposed schools.  Only limited information may be available for these proposed schools.

Some school boards of trustees have units that have been set up for specific purposes, such as teen parent units.  Students from a number of schools may attend the unit for courses of varying length.  Two type of special purpose units are included in this directory; teen parent units and activity centres.

Established by agreement of the Minister of Education, teen parent units are for students unable to learn in the mainstream educational system because of pregnancy and child rearing responsibilities.

Established by the Minster of Education, although no more are to be established, activity centres provide a specialised learning programme for secondary school students (years 9–13) who are at risk of disengaging from mainstream schooling and/or at risk of low educational, social, or vocational outcomes.

Email Addresses

Only ECE centres and schools that agreed to the public release of their email address have those addresses listed here. Persons or organisations wishing to send email material to individuals or organisations whose email addresses appear in this directory must comply with the requirements of the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007. Publication of email addresses on this site should not be taken as deemed consent to receiving unsolicited email.

Indicative Roll Numbers (Schools Directory)

Roll numbers presented here are not from the Ministry’s formal roll collections.  They are estimates calculated from ENROL, a Ministry of Education system.  ENROL is a register of student enrolments.  It lets schools update enrolments as students enrol, change schools or leave the school system.  The system was developed to facilitate the accurate and efficient enrolment of students, and, to monitor and ensure student enrolment and attendance (particularly during the compulsory schooling ages).

Ethnic Classification

The term "ethnicity" refers to the ethnic group or groups to which an individual belongs.  The concept of ethnicity adopted by the Ministry of Education is a social construct of group affiliation and identity.  The Ministry of Education uses the definition of ethnicity used by Statistics New Zealand, namely:

A social group whose members have one or more of the following characteristics:

  • they share a sense of common origins,
  • they claim a common and distinctive history and destiny,
  • they possess one or more dimensions of collective cultural individuality,
  • they feel a sense of unique collective solidarity.

Where possible, ethnicity data is presented as a multiple response. Multiple response works by considering each ethnicity a person affiliates with as one data entry. For example, the data relating to an individual who affiliates as both Māori and Pasifika will be included in both categories. They are, however, included only once in the total. This approach is easily undertaken when data is collected in a disaggregate fashion.

However, ECE and school rolls are based on prioritised ethnicity.  Prioritisation of ethnicity is when people are allocated to one of the ethnicities they have recorded that they affiliate with. This usually occurs when data are collected manually and/or aggregate data returns are collected centrally. This allocation is performed using a predetermined order of ethnic groups. Where ethnicity is prioritised it is in the order of Māori, Pasifika, Asian, MELAA (Middle Eastern, Latin American, and African), other groups except European/Pākehā, and European/Pākehā.

European/Pākehā refers to people who affiliate as New Zealand European, Other European or European (not further defined). For example this includes, but is not limited to, people who consider themselves as Australian (not including Australian Aborigines), British and Irish, American, Spanish, and Ukrainian.