About Data

The EPDC has the world’s largest international education database with over 3.8 millon data points from 200 countries. The data comes from national and international websites including household survey datasets as well as studies and reports. Find links to the data sources here.

Below is a list of important links to sources of education data, profiles, and analysis. The EPDC annually checks these links, however, in the interim, a URL may change and the links may be broken. Please let us know if a link no longer works at epdc@aed.org.

The EPDC has produced a report that provides a guide to the online data and resources of five organizations that gather and disseminate education statistics: UIS, EdStats, GMR, EPDC, and OECD. Download it here: Global Education Data.

EPDC’s Sources

EPDC houses the most varied database, with national and sub-national data from UIS, World Bank, UNICEF, over 400 household surveys, and 80+ national sources, as well as education projections from over 200 countries. EPDC has data from more than 500 sources, including:

Internationally Comparable Education Data
from international education statistical organizations notably, the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). This data is calculated from administrative records reported annually by country Ministries and administrative offices, which is checked, and sometimes re-estimated and reorganized according to international International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) school levels The EPDC database includes 32 international sources.
National Adminstrative Data
from Ministries of Education and national statistical websites. This data is collected by national bodies in annual school censuses and education management information systems (EMIS), as well as national population censuses. This data can be more up to date than the international sources and often contains subnational detail. The EPDC database includes 80+ national administrative sources.
Ministry of Education
Ministries of National Statistics
Household Surveys and Census data
from datasets including the Demograhic and Health Surveys (DHS), the UNICEF Child Welfare Surveys (MICS) and other national surveys. Household surveys are especially valuable because the provide education indicators by background of the child or adult (household wealth, location, education of parents and such). The EPDC database includes 631,893 data points from more than 200 surveys. The Stata .do files used to extract the indicators from household data sets are available here.
Household Surveys
Census
Learning Assessments
data from national and international exam and assessment series such as the Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Education Quality (SACMEQ) (South Africa XXX), PASEC, DHS reading assessments, PRYAM India surveys. Assessment can be from the entire student population or a representative sample. As education focus turns increasingly to ensuring quality, assessments are gaining in importance. The EPDC database includes information from 16 assessments and exams.
Other Relevant Sources
with data calculated by NGO and academic researchers, including the economic freedom and corruption indices.

Detailed data

A special focus of the EPDC database is data by sub-national region and pupil background- wealth quintile, education of mother, ethnic group, urban or rural residence. Such sub-national data illustrates the often large education inequality within countries and pinpoints which sub-groups of children are most disadvantaged. EPDC's unique structure and search engines enable the housing of this detailed information into one searchable database.

Refined Searches

The EPDC search interface allows users to refine and filter their criteria along 11 categories – country, indicator, year, gender, age, school level, urban/rural, sub-national regions, household characteristics. The guided search function enables users to identify exactly what data is available.

Hierarchical organization

The search interface is organized hierarchically from the general categories to greater detail. For example, the 120 indicators are organized into 12 categories, including: access to school, completion and progression, gender parity indices, teachers and schools, etc. The users can select a general category for a search, or drill down to greater detail.

EPDC’s Sources

Internationally Comparable Education Data

National Adminstrative Data

Ministry of Education

Ministries of National Statistics

Household Surveys and Census data

Household Surveys

Census

Learning Assessments

Other Relevant Sources

Detailed data

Refined Searches

Hierarchical organization