Guidance

School census 2024 to 2025: technical information

Technical specification and validation rules for submitting 2024 to 2025 school census data.

Applies to England

Documents

School census 2024 to 2025: annexes

School census 2024 to 2025: validation rules

Details

This is technical information about submitting data for the school census for 2024 to 2025.

It is for those who:

  • supply software for school management information systems (MIS)
  • use school MIS software

The specification shows:

  • changes to the previous year’s census collection
  • data schools should supply at school level and pupil level
  • how to structure the data in XML
  • how to check the data against the validation rules

You should also read the common basic data set. This defines common data items that schools use in MIS software and we use in our data collections.

More guidance on submitting school census data is available.

We engage with software suppliers through the software suppliers forum. Software suppliers can join the forum by emailing Queries.SUPPLIER@education.gov.uk.

Updates to this page

Published 26 March 2024
Last updated 28 November 2024 + show all updates
  1. Updated the business and technical specification, annexes and validation rules. Details of the changes are described in the version histories.

  2. Updated 'School census 2024 to 2025: validation rules'.

  3. Updated the business and technical specification, annexes and validation rules.

  4. Updated 'School census 2024 to 2025: validation rules'.

  5. Updated the 'School census 2024 to 2025: business and technical specification' and 'School census 2024 to 2025: annexes'.

  6. Updated 'School census 2024 to 2025: validation rules'.

  7. Updated 'School census 2024 to 2025: business and technical specification', 'School census 2024 to 2025: annexes' and added 'School census 2024 to 2025: validation rules'.

  8. First published.

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