Making a Difference with Data - Online Conference - Education Section - Introductory presentation

Making A Difference with DATA: Education

Making a Difference with Education Data

MADwData Online Conference - 15th June 2011
Discussion starter

http://www.madwdata.org.uk/forum

Practical Participation - tim@practicalparticipation.co.uk | @timdavies | June 2011


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Making a Difference with^Education Data

MADwData Online Conference - 15th June 2011
Discussion starter




There’s a lot of education data in the public
sector, but much of it’s isn’t fully open.

It’s useful to draw a distinction between:

Data that is not available Data you can ﬁnd and Data you can access, remix
digitally for re-use. Either use... but where there and re-use and re-
because of restrictions may be restrictions, or distribute freely.
(e.g. pay to use) or because issues with re-using and
no-one has made it re-distributing it.
available yet.



Education is a broad ﬁeld...

The current availability and use of data varies across
different education sectors...

Q: How do you use any education data right now?



Let’s take a look at data availability in two
key areas areas:

Provision & Performance



Education Provision



Education Provision

Data on schools, colleges and
universities is held in EduBase



Education Provision

You can get extracts from the data for free (after
registration), but not the whole dataset.



Education Provision


You have to pay for regular updates from the data, and there
are restrictions on re-use you can make of the data.



Education Provision


You have to pay for regular updates from the data, and there
are restrictions on re-use you can make of the data.

EduBase data has been made available as Linked Open Data
through data.gov.uk, but only once - based on an extract
which is now appears to be becoming stale and out-of-date...



Education Provision

Data on early-years provision and
positive activities was in the national
Family Information Directory



Education Provision

Data on early-years provision and
positive activities was in the national
Family Information Directory

or for
gregat nt
e national ag in rece
But th ta was axed
this da funding cuts



Education Provision

Data on early-years provision and A coalition of providers have taken on
positive activities was in the national the aggregator and are rebuilding the
Family Information Directory national dataset, with about 30
authorities covered so far

or for
gregat nt
But th ta was axed



Education Provision


or for
gregat nt
But th ta was axed

There is structured data available to browse
online in the new system

But no ‘raw’ open data available for download



Education Provision


or for
gregat nt
But th ta was axed
partially

There is structured data available to browse
online in the new system

But no ‘raw’ open data available for download



Education Provision

http://blog.ouseful.info/2011/03/24/tso-openup-competition-opening-up-ucas-data/



Education Provision
Opening up UCAS university course
data was a winning idea in The
Stationary Ofﬁce’s recent Open.UP
competition




Education Provision
competition
But the data on University courses
remains closed

Some statistical is available, but only
through a web interface, or
downloading .exe ﬁles (PC only)




Education Provision
competition
But the data on University courses
remains closed

Some statistical is available, but only
through a web interface, or
downloading .exe ﬁles (PC only)

Courses:
partially
Stats:



Education Provision
Plings.net gathers information on
places to go and things to do for
young people from local
authorities.



Education Provision
Plings.net gathers information on
places to go and things to do for
young people from local
authorities.
The data is accessible through an API, on
different platforms and through widgets you
can add to your website.

The data only covers a sub-set of local
authorities.

Analysis tools are available to use the data to
inform policy making.



Education Provision
Knowing about education provision is one thing.

Analysis can beneﬁt from mash-ups, combining education provision
data with:



Education Provision

data with:

Trafﬁc data: http://bit.ly/lAsbnV



Education Provision

data with:

Trafﬁc data: http://bit.ly/lAsbnV Demographics



Education Provision

data with:

Trafﬁc data: http://bit.ly/lAsbnV Demographics Qualiﬁcations data



Education Provision

data with:

& more...



Education Provision

data with:

& more...
The openness of data is really important if you want to combine it other other open datasets, and to
use low-cost / free tools for your mash-up


Let’s look at data on education performance...



Performance statistics



The Department for Education and the
Department for Business Innovation &
Skills maintain a statistical portal




It contains a wide range of statistical reports and
analysis.

Data is generally available for download in Excel
spreadsheets.

The spreadsheets are often of pre-analysed data,
and can be tricky to manipulate and remix. Raw
data is now always available (sometimes because it
would be sensitive / personally identifying)




It contains a wide range of statistical reports and
analysis.

Data is generally available for download in Excel
spreadsheets.

The spreadsheets are often of pre-analysed data,
and can be tricky to manipulate and remix. Raw
data is now always available (sometimes because it
would be sensitive / personally identifying)

and some raw




The Higher Education Statistics Agency
provide a range of statistical reports

and




The Higher Education Statistics Agency
provide a range of statistical reports

Some summary data tables are provided for
download in Excel format.

Data before 2005 is available for free download.

Newer datasets are available for purchase, with
restrictions on how they can be re-used.

and



Ofsted reports contain data on schools,
childcare, children’s social care and a
number of other education providers.



Most of the data is locked-up inside PDF reports
or web-pages - and no raw database is available.

The data can be ‘scraped’ and a number of
services, such as Schooloscope.com have scraped
and presented Ofsted data for schools back in new
ways.



Most of the data is locked-up inside PDF reports
or web-pages - and no raw database is available.

The data can be ‘scraped’ and a number of
services, such as Schooloscope.com have scraped
and presented Ofsted data for schools back in new
ways.

/


The Department for Education publishes
league tables of schools. A number of
newspapers publish University league
tables.



The Department for Education publishes
league tables of schools. A number of
newspapers publish University league
tables.
Department for Education League tables are
accessible with detailed raw data on the web, in
Excel and CSV downloads.

Newspaper generated league tables are generally
accessible on the web, but the raw data isn’t
available for download under open licenses.



So far we’ve found lots of datasets, but not many are fully open in ways that make
them really easy to re-use. With the number of stakeholders and institutions around
different areas of education data, making the sector more open is likely to need
leadership and focussed action as well as grass-roots initiatives.

~~~

There are 100s of other education datasets we could look at as well, from research
evidence gathered by academics, to data from job centres and volunteering services.

Q: Which other datasets or data themes would you like to
explore the openness of?

Remember: you can share your answer to the questions in this presentation in
the MADwData forum at http://www.madwdata.org.uk/forum



Of course, the really important question is:

How can you make a difference
with any of this data?



You might have a number of different roles...

Creator and Remixer and Consumer
publisher intermediary and user
If you hold key data, can you Can you make datasets easier Is there data you are missing
make it available for others for other people to use - by to make an informed policy
to analyse and use as well? cleaning them up, or decision?
providing ways to visualise
Can you encourage use of and explore them? Are there datasets that can
your data which will help help answer key questions?
solve the policy challenges Can you create a mash-up or Or datasets that can help you
you face? analysis of a dataset that will ﬁnd the right questions to be
provide key insights? asking?
Can you make your data
easier to mash-up with other Can you provide a service Can data help you make a
datasets to generate new based on data that will help better individual choice? Or
insights? improve policy making? campaign better for policy
change?



Q: How could these different approaches to making a difference
with data apply to the policy challenges you face?

Join the discussion at

on 15th June 2011 - 11:00 - 13:00 BST



...to be continued

(This presentation will be updated based on discussion during the
MADwData online conference)


Making a Difference with Data - Online Conference - Education Section - Introductory presentation

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Making a Difference with Data - Online Conference - Education Section - Introductory presentation

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