Date: 30th September 2024
DfE School Census Date: Thurs 3rd October 2024
Return Date: Tues 8th October 2024
As you may be aware, the statutory School Census for the Autumn Term takes place on Thursday 3rd October 2024. We strongly recommend that schools have prepared for the School Census by ensuring that, so far as possible, pupil databases are up-to-date and the relevant systems / accesses are in place.
1. SIMS users – latest fileset
Schools must have upgraded to version 7.218 or above and must have imported fileset 2803 which includes the DfE validation for the school census and workforce census. If you are a hosted school, Scomis applied this fileset automatically for you on 25/09/24. If you encounter any difficulties, please contact Scomis on 01392 385300. Non hosted schools need to download filesets from the Scomis website and apply themselves. Please see SCOMIS Autumn 2024 Census Bulletin for the latest SIMS information (including fileset information).
Note: fileset 2803 is needed for authorising your census return.
2. Known Issues
1763 – Periods of free school meal eligibility that ended before or on previous census day or after current census day should not be included in the return.
This error has an incorrect FSM end date range of 16/05/24 to 03/10/24 when the correct date range is 17/05/24 to 03/10/24. Therefore this error will not trigger in schools’ MIS for pupils who have a FSM end date of 2024-05-16. However, the error will trigger correctly when the return is loaded onto COLLECT.
2002 – Pupil’s NC year is not within the range of the school’s lowest and highest NC year
NC year X has been excluded from this validation check, however the error will trigger where relevant when loaded onto COLLECT.
4008Q – Please check: no students on roll are in receipt of 16-19 Learner Funding and Monitoring
This query did not include learner FAM tuition code 01 for students 16-19. At this late stage the DfE recognise that suppliers may not have been able to amend their software. Therefore if there are no 16-19 students receiving tuition this query will not trigger in the school’s MIS, however it will trigger when the return has been loaded onto COLLECT.
3036 – Eligibility code missing for pupil aged 9 months to 2 years with expanded hours greater than 0 present
This error will trigger correctly, however it will display an incorrect error message in schools’ MI which only refers to 2 year olds. The correct error message relating to pupils aged 9 months to 2 year olds will display in COLLECT.
3. Reinstatement from suspensions after suspension has been complete
ESS have liaised with the DfE to clarify how schools should record the scenario where the governing board decides on reinstatement of a pupil from a suspension after the pupil has completed that suspension. The DfE has confirmed that they expect this to be recording in the schools MIS as follows;
- The record of suspension should be set to reinstatement and will thereby not be reported in School Census.
- The attendance session codes of E to indicate unable to attend because of a suspension or exclusion should remain and will thereby be reported in School Census.
In this respect the DfE’s approach to reinstated from suspension is in line with its approach to reinstatement from permanent exclusion, in that the permanent exclusion should be set to reinstatement, and is thereby not reported in School Census, while the attendance session set to E are left in place to indicate the pupil did not need to attend for those sessions, and is thereby reported in School Census.
4. Support
If you have any queries, or if this is your first census, please email census@devon.gov.uk and someone from the Education Information Team will contact you to provide support and guidance.
Kind regards,
Education Information Team (EdIT)