Generate and submit your return
Information on accessing and using our data collection systems to send us your school census data.
These types of school are responsible for submitting their own data to the Department for Education (DfE) using COLLECT:
- academies, including alternative provision academies
- free schools, including alternative provision free schools
- university technical colleges
- studio schools
- non-maintained special schools
- city technology colleges
Maintained schools, including pupil referral units, either:
- submit data directly to DfE using COLLECT
- make data available to the local authority who will submit on their behalf
If yours is a maintained school or pupil referral unit, contact your local authority to find out their deadlines for submission.
It is essential that all relevant pupil data has been entered and updated in your MIS before the school census return is created.
You should read this guide alongside the documents provided by your software supplier.
Your software supplier is likely to have produced a ‘data entry specification’ listing all the pupil data that you must enter into your system for the records in your school census return to be complete and correct.
If you’ve not seen this specification, contact your trust or local authority for advice. If you do not get management information system or ICT support from your trust or local authority, contact your software supplier direct.
We provide your software supplier with a file set at the start of the academic year, so that may have a series of ‘data checks’ that are applied within the MIS. This will help you to identify and correct errors in your data before you generate your final return.
Doing these checks will reduce the number of validation errors in your return and the work you need to do to resolve them within COLLECT.
Successfully completing the data checks does not guarantee that all the necessary data is present and that your return is correct. Not having any validation errors or queries does not guarantee a successful return. Make sure that you’ve entered all information required by the data entry specification into your system in full.
COLLECT familiarisation
We strongly recommend that you take the chance to load a file output from their MIS into COLLECT during the familiarisation period.
This allows you to check:
- that all the required data is being output correctly from your MIS
- whether any validation errors or queries are generated against their data when loaded into COLLECT that need to be resolved before the collection goes live
This will be especially important for any schools completing the school census for the first time.
COLLECT familiarisation usually opens 4 weeks before each collection and takes place on the same system as the live collection, which is accessed via DfE sign-in. School census contacts will be notified via email when the familiarisation blade is made available.
Your software automatically generates a summary of the data in the school census return. The return is too large to be viewed in full, so the school summary will:
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allow you to check that the data is accurate and complete before sending it to the headteacher
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allow the headteacher authorising the return to check it’s accurate and complete before submitting it to the local authority or DfE
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allow local authorities to check the return from maintained schools
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give schools their only opportunity to check information about persistent absenteeism in their census data before it’s used for funding purposes and published in performance tables
We strongly recommended that you inspect the summary report carefully, paying particular attention to the sections that might show that some individual pupil data was not entered on to the system before generating the return, such as:
- free school meal eligibility
- the number of pupils with special educational needs (SEN)
- data items marked [used for funding]
- absence data
Comparing the summary reports to the previous term or year will show any anomalies between the different census collections.
It’s vital that you check the accuracy of the data in this summary report. It is the data submitted to us as an accurate record of the situation in your school on census day.
The headteacher is responsible for reviewing and authorising census data before you submit it.
This confirms that the data you submit is correct.
The act of submitting the data to the department, directly or through the local authority for maintained schools, automatically confirms the return as authorised by the headteacher.
Only submit a school census return, after you’ve checked the data and added any explanatory notes needed.
Local authorities and schools can implement further authorisation methods, such as printing and signing the summary report if they want.
To use COLLECT to submit your school census data, you’ll need to register and log in with DfE sign-in.
Contact your school or local authority approver, if:
- you want to request a DfE sign-in username or password so you can access COLLECT
- ‘school census’ is not on the list of collections you can see in COLLECT
If you do not know who your approver is, use the DfE sign-in request form.
If you’ve forgotten your password, use DfE sign-in to reset it. You’ll need to click ‘start now’ and then the ‘I’ve forgotten my password’ link.
COLLECT guides for school and local authorities are available for assistance with submitting your return to DfE.
For queries about submitting your data, contact us using our data collections service request form.