Workforce Census - Federation guidance - Support for schools and settings

Devon Federated Schools guidance – (with one personnel system)

If your school is part of a Federation and the ‘Personnel’ module for all schools in the Federation has been amalgamated into one system (resulting in one census file), you will need to follow this section. If your school is part of a federation but each school sends in their own return via COLLECT – please follow the guidance and checklist for all other schools.

As the DfE requires a separate School Workforce Census for each school within the Federation, the school holding the personnel information needs to provide;

one School Workforce Census containing all the data
a list of all staff with their contract details allocated against each school they attend¹, i.e. contract post, dates, hours per week, FTE hours, weeks per year, annual pay and any additional payments (please see below for guidance on how to provide this information)
a list of teacher and teaching assistant absences indicating which schools the absences should be assigned against
headcount information for Current Vacancies, Occasional (Supply) Teachers and Third Party Support Staff present on census day for each of the schools
name of school holding the contract for the Executive Headteacher post (as the post should be recorded against this school, with the other school(s) not reporting an Executive Head)

¹ The DfE state that where staff are shared across schools, they must be returned separately for each school, showing the appropriate hours.

Receiving data for individual schools will allow those schools to use the Schools financial benchmarking website to compare their income, expenditure and workforce figures with similar establishments in England. The dashboard provides red, amber or green (RAG) ratings against a school’s data that indicates how its spend and characteristics compare with similar schools or nationally recognised bandings and recommendations. The DfE also need data for individual schools to accurately report national statistics broken down by different school types and phases, as well as measures that rely on other school level data such as pupil to teacher ratios.

How to provide the information

Once you have run through your Workforce Census and resolved your errors and queries please export the following Detail Reports to Excel (open the report, right click your mouse and select ‘Export to Microsoft Excel’);

Workforce member contract/service agreement details
Workforce member allowance details
Workforce member absence details

Add columns to the spreadsheet for each school in your federation and indicate with a ‘tick’ or ‘yes’ which records should be recorded against each school. Alternatively, you could add one column and enter the school name or DfE code relevant to the contract.

Where members of staff have a contract where hours are split across the schools please specify the proportion of hours per week to be allocated against each school. This proportional split will also be applied to the payment details.

If you encounter difficulties in exporting the reports to Excel, you may print the reports and add the information by hand before scanning to the census mailbox.

Please forward completed spreadsheets to census@devon.gov.uk and include details on Current Vacancies, Occasional (Supply) Teachers and Third Party Support Staff in your email (if the information has not been provided elsewhere). Please ensure that the subject of the email includes the DfE code of the main school followed by the Federation name (for ease of identification).

Credibility Reports from COLLECT

To ensure that the data provided in your Workforce Census is correct the Department for Education have produced Credibility Reports in COLLECT. To assist schools, the Credibility Data Check and other reports will be included in the Education Information Team’s data checking report that will be sent to all schools. The report will be emailed to the main school of the Federation.

As schools are responsible for accurate submissions any anomalies identified in the report run need to be investigated and resolved. For example, staff with no contracts, missing personal details (NI number, teacher number), teachers whose pay is outside grade range and staff who appear to be working more than full time hours.

Once you have uploaded your return to COLLECT the Education Information Team (EDIT) will email the Return Credibility Check and other reports to you so you can check any anomalies;

If there are numerous amendments required then you will need to make the changes in sims and upload another file to COLLECT, EDIT will not work on creating separate files until an updated single file has been received
If there are only a few amendments required you can email census@devon.gov.uk with the necessary changes and authorise us to update your file in COLLECT for you.

Please be aware that some of the queries raised may be because the report is being run on one file for the whole federation. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you need any support.
The full set of reports are available to run direct from COLLECT should schools wish to do so.

Federations’ Queries and Errors in COLLECT

Please do not enter any notes in response to queries/errors raised in COLLECT until EDIT has contacted you advising that your return has been processed (it could take a couple of weeks for your files to be processed).

Any errors/queries are initially generated against your single file and therefore you need to wait until separate files have been created and processed (any queries will then be relevant to your individual schools’ returns).

If you are the lead school in the Federation and have any queries in this regard, please email census@devon.gov.uk and a member of the Education Information Team will contact you.

School Workforce Census 2023 – additional checklist – federations

For Federations submitting one file to COLLECT for two or more schools
Use this checklist to tick off each of the tasks once they have been completed.

Actions

Are all your staff details up to date and correct? Have you updated:

the annual increase in base pay (if agreed within your school)
date of last pay review
absences for teachers and teaching assistants
qualifications

Run your census in Sims and clear all errors and any queries that can be resolved – see our guide for further information.

Export the following detailed reports to an excel spreadsheet and indicate which records should be returned against each school in the federation:

Workforce member contract/service agreement details.
Workforce member allowance details.
Workforce member absence details.

You can add columns to the spreadsheet for each school in your federation and indicate with a ‘tick’ or ‘yes’ which records should be recorded against each school. Or you could add one column and enter the school name or DfE code relevant to the contract.

Once your headteacher is satisfied that the information in the census is correct, authorise the return in SIMS and upload it to COLLECT (see below).

Upload and submit your return in COLLECT via the DfE Sign in.

Email the following to the Education Information Team (census@devon.gov.uk):

3 spreadsheets indicating which records need to be returned against each school (contracts, allowances and absence spreadsheets).
Name of the Executive Headteacher and which school should hold this contract (DfE advise only one school should hold an Executive Headteacher’s contract).
Occasional (supply) teachers indicating numbers to be allocated against each school.
3^rd Party Support Staff indicating numbers allocated against each school.
Teacher Vacancies indicating numbers to be allocated against each school.

Once you have uploaded your return to COLLECT the Education Information Team (EDIT) will email the Return Credibility Check and other COLLECT reports to you for your attention:

If there are numerous amendments required you will need to make the changes in sims and upload another file to COLLECT, EDIT will not work on creating separate files for each school until an updated single file has been received.
If there are only a few amendments required you can email census@devon.gov.uk with the necessary changes and authorise us to update your file in COLLECT for you.

Once you have provided your feedback on the COLLECT reports, EDIT will then:

create separate files in COLLECT for each school
amend staff records as indicated in the spreadsheets uploaded by the school
amend Occasional Teachers, 3rd Party Support Staff and Teacher Vacancies as instructed
amend any other data as requested, for example, due to suspended contracts

Once this has been completed the Education Information Team will email data checking reports to you for each school in the Federation, listing any queries that have been identified and need investigating by yourselves. Could you please prioritise these emails to avoid delays in approving your return for the Department for Education.