Guidance

Early years census 2018: technical specification

Technical specification and validation rules for local authorities and software suppliers preparing for the early years census 2018.

• From: Department for Education
• Published: 6 July 2017
• Last updated: 6 April 2018 — See all updates

This publication was withdrawn on 30 July 2019

These documents are for the 2018 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 2018: business and technical specification, version 1.2

Ref: DFE-00168-2017

PDF, 477 KB, 52 pages

Early years census 2018: validation rules, version 1.6

ODS, 36.6 KB

This file is in an OpenDocument format

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Early years census 2018: validation rules, version 1.6

MS Excel Spreadsheet, 149 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.

Details

This is technical information about submitting data for the early years census 2018.

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 6 July 2017
Last updated 6 April 2018 + show all updates

1. 6 April 2018

   Updated the validation rules spreadsheet. The document's version history describes the updates.

2. 18 January 2018

   Updated the validation rules spreadsheet. The document's version history describes the updates.

3. 23 November 2017

   Updated the business and technical specification to correct minor discrepancies within the example XML structure.

4. 14 November 2017

   Updated the validation rules spreadsheet. The document's version history describes the updates.

5. 6 July 2017

   First published.