Guidance
School census 2025 to 2026: technical information
Technical specification and validation rules for submitting 2025 to 2026 school census data.
Applies to England
Documents
Details
This is technical information about submitting data for the school census for 2025 to 2026.
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.
Updates to this page
Published 3 April 2025
Last updated 16 April 2025
show all updates
-
Updated 'School census 2025 to 2026: business and technical specification' and 'School census 2025 to 2026: annexes'. Details of the changes are described in Annex H of the business and technical specification.
-
First published.