Using real-world data is a fantastic way to get your students engaged in Data Science. To that end, we have curated a collection of organisations that we trust to provide quality datasets. Have a look through to find datasets on topics that would most interest your students:
If you’re looking for a specific dataset, not listed below, try asking in the Teachers Using Data Science Facebook group. There’s a good chance we can help you find it!
If you have a specific dataset you would like to use and want some help building a data project for your students, that’s our favourite thing to do! Email us at contact@adsei.org.
Please note, these are just the repositories – if you are looking for datasets with lesson plan guidance, check out our Lesson Plans for a list of classroom activities.
Australian Government Data
| Organisation | Description | Link |
| Australian Government | Australian government data. We love NationalMap – a very useful tool for visualising geospatial data. You can do things like view a choropleth map (regions coloured by value) of average weekly earnings, according to the 2021 census. | data.gov.au |
| Vic Government | Victorian Government open data site has all kinds of state government data, including train passenger counts, where you can do things like compare pre pandemic train usage with 2020, or 2023. | data.vic.gov.au |
| NSW Government | New South Wales open data site, similar to the Victorian government site. Everything from transport to bushifire impact on water quality. | data.nsw.gov.au |
| WA Government | Western Australian open data site. Again, a wide range of data, including geospatial datasets about native title applications. | data.wa.gov.au |
| SA Government | South Australian open data, including most popular baby names | data.sa.gov.au |
| TAS Government | Tasmanian open data site. | thelist.tas.gov.au |
| NT Government | Northern Territory open data site. | data.nt.gov.au |
| QLD Government | Queensland open data site. | data.qld.gov.au |
| ACT Government | Australian Capital Territory open data site. | data.act.gov.au |
Australian Organisations
| Organisation | Description | Link |
| ACARA | Lots of interesting Australian education data | ACARA Website |
| Australian Electoral Commission | Australian voting data can be found at the AEC. It’s worth digging down past the statistics to the actual vote files, as those are really rich datasets where you can explore differences by electorate, polling booth, etc. | AEC Website-All Elections 2025 Federal Election data |
| Australian Bureau of Statistics | Tonnes of fascinating downloadable date here! | ABS Website |
| Australian Bureau of Meteorology | The BoM provides free downloads of weather observations from stations around the country, among other data. Weather stations come and go over time, so check the dates covered by each download. | Weather Station Directory |
| Australian Ocean Data Network | Interesting ocean data. | AODN Portal |
| Australian Map by Friends of the Earth | Mapped data from the Friends of the Earth, including pollution and koala data. | Australian Map Website |
| Atlas of Living Australia | A treasure trove of data about Australian fauna and flora, with citizen science data and scientific research results. | Atlas of Living Australia Website |
| Science Under Sail | Seagrass Dataset from Science Under Sail. There’s a csv file and links to arcgis content as well. | Datasets (curated by ADSEI) |
International Organisations
| Organisation | Description | Link |
| Gapminder | Gapminder is an independent educational non-profit fighting global misconceptions. They have some great ways of exploring data, plus downloads. | Gapminder website Bubble charts (our favourite) |
| ISS-Mimic | A live feed (with historical data as well) of telemetry from the International Space Station. It is messy and uncurated but perfect for space geeks! | ISS Telemetry Github Repo |
| World Happiness Report | The World Happiness Report is an annual report invistigating global wellbeing and how to imprive it. We have divided the data by year (2005-2017) and country to make it easier for you to use. | Data by year Data by country (curated by ADSEI) |
There are plenty more amazing data repositories out there. If you have a favourite that should be listed here, please email us!
If you’d like to support ADSEI’s efforts to get real data into the classroom, you can donate at givenow.com.au/adsei/