LMI for All has released a new dataset through the open API. This allow developers to integrate course searches in to their website and applications. Courses is based on the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) course directory (comprising three datasets: courses with venues, providers, and regions). This directory, released under the Open Government License, has information on courses offered by over 4,000 learning providers in England who are contracted with the ESFA, including colleges, schools, private training providers and local education authorities. Courses include adult further education, adult community learning, apprenticeships, and courses aimed at people aged 16 to 18 years.

As this course directory is to be updated on a monthly basis, it will also be refreshed in LMI for All monthly. An ETL has been developed to ensure monthly updates are efficient and to check the structure and integrity of the datasets. The dataset, which has been fully indexed, enables searches by course subject / title and filtered by location of course (by postcode), course dates and course providers.

The data returned includes course details, provider, address and cost (including whether there may be a grant). It is planned to extend this to include the mode of study in the near future

At the moment the API is set to return all courses in a 20 mile radius, although we may change this in the future.

Work in the coming months will focus on mapping location of course to county and/or Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) area to complement other datasets in LMI for All.

We would like to hear from you about how you might use these data. Please also contact us if you have ideas on how we can improve this service.