Zh Education MCP server

🇨🇭 Part of the Swiss Public Data MCP Portfolio

📊 zh-education-mcp

MCP server for education statistics of the Canton and City of Zurich (BISTA)

🇩🇪 Deutsche Version

Overview

zh-education-mcp connects AI assistants to the Bildungsstatistik Kanton Zürich (BISTA) — the official education statistics of the Canton of Zurich. It provides structured access to pupil numbers, school district trends, secondary school profiles, nationality breakdowns, and gymnasium graduation rates.

All data is fetched from the BISTA public API (bista.zh.ch/basicapi/ogd/) — no API key required. Data is updated annually on 15 September (reference date).

Anchor demo query: "How has the number of pupils in school district Letzi developed over the last 5 years?"

Demo

Features

• 📊 8 tools for education data across all school levels
• 🔍 School district trends — pupil numbers for all Schulkreise (Letzi, Glattal, Schwamendingen, Oerlikon, Uto, Waidberg, Zürichberg) from 2000 to present
• 🏫 Secondary school profiles — breakdown by requirement type (Sek A/B/C, Mittelschule, special classes)
• 🌐 Nationality structure — top nationalities of pupils per school community
• 🎓 Gymnasium graduation rates — Maturitätsquote by municipality, district, and canton
• 📈 Canton-wide overview — all learners by school level, type, gender, and nationality
• 🏠 Residence-based trends — pupil counts by place of residence (Bezirk / Gemeinde)
• 🏛️ Mittelschulen — Gymnasium, FMS, HMS statistics
• 🔓 No API key required — all data under CC BY 4.0
• ☁️ Dual transport — stdio (Claude Desktop) + Streamable HTTP (cloud)

Prerequisites

• Python 3.11+
• uv (recommended) or pip

Installation

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/malkreide/zh-education-mcp.git
cd zh-education-mcp

# Install
pip install -e .
# or with uv:
uv pip install -e .

Or with uvx (no permanent installation):

uvx zh-education-mcp

Quickstart

# stdio (for Claude Desktop)
python -m zh_education_mcp.server

# Streamable HTTP (port 8000)
python -m zh_education_mcp.server --http --port 8000

Try it immediately in Claude Desktop:

"Wie hat sich die Lernendenzahl im Schulkreis Letzi entwickelt?"

"Zeige die Maturitätsquote der Stadt Zürich"

"Welche Nationalitäten sind in Adliswil am häufigsten?"

→ More use cases by audience →

Configuration

Claude Desktop

Edit ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claudedesktopconfig.json (macOS) or %APPDATA%\Claude\claudedesktopconfig.json (Windows):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "zh-education": {
      "command": "python",
      "args": ["-m", "zh_education_mcp.server"]
    }
  }
}

Or with uvx:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "zh-education": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["zh-education-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Shortened. The full README is on GitHub.