Annual school census data from Northern Ireland qualifies as National Statistics. The dataset tracks counts of schools across management types including Controlled, Voluntary (Maintained and Non-Maintained), Grant-Maintained Integrated, and Independent schools from 1991 to 2017. It is produced by OpenDataNI under the OGL-UK-3.0 license.
Use Cases
- Analyze trends in the number of Controlled integrated schools based on the description of a 'small but growing number'.
- Compare the prevalence of Voluntary (Maintained) schools entitled to 100% capital grants versus other management types.
- Track the establishment of Grant-Maintained Integrated schools at primary and post-primary levels over the covered time period.
- Study the relationship between school management type and the operational responsibilities of Boards of Governors described in the data.
Strengths
- Data qualifies as National Statistics, indicating a high standard of quality assurance.
- Provides a 26-year time series from 1991 to 2017 for longitudinal analysis.
- Description details specific school management types and their governance structures.
Limitations
- Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
- Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
- Freshness should be verified as the last metadata update is dated 2026-07-08.
Provenance
- Source
- OpenDataNI
- Collection Method
- Collected annually through the School census exercise where each school submits a return.
- Time Range
- 1991 to 2017
- Freshness
- Data collection is annual via a school census in October. Last metadata update was 2026-07-08.
- Geography
- Northern Ireland