UK Education Statistics MCP Server

UK Education Statistics

The Department for Education (DfE) Public Statistics API provides programmatic access to official education statistics publications and data sets for England.

Data Model

• Publications — Statistical releases (e.g. "Apprenticeships", "Phonics screening check attainment"). Each has an ID, title, slug, summary, and last published date.
• Data Sets — Tabular data within a publication. Each has filters, indicators, geographic levels, and time periods. Data sets have versioned releases.

Key Patterns

• Publications list supports page and pageSize for pagination.
• Publication data sets are accessed via /publications/{id}/data-sets.
• Data set metadata at /data-sets/{id}/meta describes available filters and indicators.
• Data set IDs are UUIDs. Publication IDs are also UUIDs.
• The search parameter on publications does full-text search across title and summary.

Gotchas

• No auth: Completely open API.
• No global data-sets list: Data sets are scoped to publications — use /publications/{id}/data-sets.
• Pagination: Uses page/pageSize (not offset/limit). Page 1 is the first page.
• Large responses: Data set metadata can be very large (hundreds of filter options). Use sparingly.