Date: 14th January 2025
DfE School Census Date: Thurs 16th January 2025
Return Date: Tues 21st January 2025
1. SIMS users – latest fileset
Schools must have upgraded to version 7.220 or above and must have imported fileset 2903 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 13/01/25. 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 Spring 2025 Census Bulletin for the latest SIMS information (including fileset information).
Note: fileset 2903 is needed for authorising your census return.
2. Known issues – errors that have been specified incorrectly
The DfE advise that at this late stage not all software suppliers will have sufficient time to implement changes in their software prior to the spring census going live. If you have checked your data and are happy that it’s correct you can upload your return. These errors, if being generated incorrectly, will disappear once your file has been uploaded to COLLECT. Any errors that remain in COLLECT will be genuine.
E2984 please confirm provision opening/closing times
this error should have been specified for one specific childcare type, and should not have referred to the opening, closing time fields or the 8AM to 6PM fields.
E2985 please confirm provision opening/closing times
this error should have been specified against the 8AM to 6PM field only and should have excluded ‘under 5’ childcare.
E2167 Each SEN type must be unique
This query is not being triggered if a school records a SEN type of ‘DS’ (down syndrome) for a pupil more than once. It will do so in COLLECT.
E2987 and E2988 are new validations to ensure the correct data has been provided for ‘after’ school childcare and ‘holiday’ childcare.
3. Ethnicity Codes
The DfE added 4 ethnicity codes this academic year, which were additions to the Asian/Asian British and Black/African/Caribbean/Black British categories;
Asian British, Asian Welsh, Black British, Black Welsh
The DfE have asked schools not to use these new codes at the moment as they are currently reviewing them and how they interact with other ethnicity standards across the government. If you have already used these codes then you do not need to re-collect or re-record the data and the will be accepted by the DfE. A further update will be provided once the DfE have completed their review. 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. COLLECT – ‘Report’ query and ‘Dup UPN Report’ error
The DfE advise that this query and error which were introduced in autumn 2024 will remain in place for the Spring 2025 census and moving forward.
Report query – This triggers if the relevant reports for your school phase or type have not been run, the query will trigger until all relevant reports have been run, however this will not prevent the return from being authorised.
DupUPNRprt Error – This triggers if the return has unresolved duplicates which impact funding allocations. The return will not be authorised until the error has been resolved. Please note if the return has been previously authorised and a duplicate UPN is introduced at any point during the live collection the return status will revert to approved.
Please note as these reports run overnight, the validation will also be run overnight and therefore the errors will not be apparent until the following day.
5. 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)