Guidance

Early years census 2017: technical specification

Technical specification and validation rules for local authorities and software suppliers preparing for the early years census 2017.

• From: Department for Education
• Published: 12 August 2016
• Last updated: 14 December 2016 — See all updates

This publication was withdrawn on 30 July 2019

These documents are for the 2017 early years census. For the current census, visit our guide to submitting data for the early years census.

Applies to England

Documents

Early years census 2017: business and technical specification, version 1.4

Ref: DFE-00192-2016

PDF, 980 KB, 46 pages

Early years census 2017: validation rules, version 1.2

MS Excel Spreadsheet, 158 KB

This file may not be suitable for users of assistive technology.

Request an accessible format.

If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need a version of this document in a more accessible format, please email alternative.formats@education.gov.uk. Please tell us what format you need. It will help us if you say what assistive technology you use.

Early years census 2017: validation rules, version 1.2

ODS, 38.4 KB

This file is in an OpenDocument format

This file may not be suitable for users of assistive technology.

Request an accessible format.

If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need a version of this document in a more accessible format, please email alternative.formats@education.gov.uk. Please tell us what format you need. It will help us if you say what assistive technology you use.

Details

This is technical information about submitting data for the early years census 2017.

It is for:

• suppliers of software for local authority management information systems (MIS)
• users of local authority MIS software

It explains:

• changes to the previous year’s census collection
• what data local authorities should supply at establishment level and child level
• how to structure the data in XML or CSV format
• how to check the data against the validation rules

The validation rules are available in Excel and OpenDocument formats.

Read more about submitting data for the early years census.

Published 12 August 2016
Last updated 14 December 2016 + show all updates

1. 14 December 2016

   Added updated 'Early years census 2017 specification' (version 1.4) and validation rules (version 1.2).

2. 12 August 2016

   First published.