Date: 16th September 2024
School Census Bulletin 1 – Autumn 2024
DfE School Census Date: Thurs 3rd Oct 2024 Return Date: Tues 8th Oct 2024
As you may be aware, the statutory School Census for the Autumn Term takes place on Thu 3rd October. We strongly recommend that schools begin to prepare 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. DfE School Funding and Pupil Premium
The autumn school census is used to inform the schools block of the dedicated schools grant and schools’ pupil premium. It also informs the Universal Infant Free School Meals grant and the high needs block of the dedicated schools grant. It is therefore important to make sure your census information is accurately submitted. Further information on pupil premium is available from Pupil premium – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
2. New validation checks
As there has been an increase in the number of schools making errors in their return which impacts on their funding allocations the DfE have introduced two new checks in COLLECT;
- Report query – this will trigger if schools haven’t run all of the funding related reports in COLLECT;
- Pupil number report
- Duplicate unique pupil number (UPN) and duplicate pupil report
- Free school meals (FSM) report
- Universal infant free school meals
- Zero funded hours (Early Years providers)
- Pupil premium
- Early years pupil premium (Early Years providers)
- Post 16 funding reports (secondary schools with 6th form)
Once all reports have been run the query will disappear. Please note, if schools reload their return or make any amendments, all applicable reports will need to be re-run against the latest position. Guidance on how to run reports in COLLECT is available via COLLECT guides for schools and local authorities – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
- DupUPNRprt Error – this will trigger if a return has unresolved duplicates which impact on funding allocations. The return will not be authorised by the DfE until the error has been resolved. If a return is authorised and a duplicate UPN appears later during the collection the status of the return will revert back to approved. Schools will therefore need to regularly check their return, even if it’s been authorised.
Please note: both the reports and validation checks run overnight so errors will not appear until the following day. The errors don’t have an error number but will output as ‘Reports’ and ‘DupUPNRprt’.
3. Changes to existing data items for autumn census
- Learner funding and monitoring – ‘national tutoring programme’ has been replaced with ‘tutoring’ and has been extended to include appropriate pupils and school types. The ‘tutoring from 16 to 19 tuition fund’ option has been removed. The amended ‘tutoring’ option now captures information on school funded tutoring for pupils in NCY 1 to 14. (note: the National Tutoring Programme ended in 2023/24).
- Early years expanded hours – up to 15 hours are now available to children from 9 months to 2 years old with working parents.
- Early years pupil premium receipt – now collected termly and extended to include children from 9 months old, so now applies to disadvantaged EY children aged 9mths to 4yr olds.
- Early years pupil premium basis for funding – now collected termly and has been extended to children from 9 months old (linked to the above).
- Early years disability access fund – has been extended to children from 9 months old.
- Post 16 programme type – the programme type “T level transition programme” has been changed to “T Level foundation year programme”.
- SEN type – now includes an option for Down Syndrome, whilst the SEN type is only collected in the spring census it might be helpful for schools now when amending pupils’ records.
4. Deleted data items
- Learner funding and monitoring – tutoring hours will no longer be collected in the census from autumn 2024
- Post 16 – work placement employer ID will be discontinued from autumn 2024
5. SIMS users – latest fileset to resolve errors
Schools must have upgraded to version 7.218 or above and must have imported the most up to date fileset (2802 at the time of publication). Scomis advise that fileset 2802 was applied automatically to hosted schools on 9th September. 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 Autumn 2024 – Fileset 2800 series – School Census – Frequently Asked Questions (scomis.org) for the latest SIMS information (including fileset information).
6. Early Years Portal – closes 29th September
For this autumn census the early years portal and school census collections are based on different weeks. The early years headcount week is Sun 15th to Sat 21st September (which is before census week) with the portal open until midnight Sun 29th September.
As the collections are based upon different weeks comparisons of hours held in the two collections cannot be made. However, we will be able to check that pupils in the EY portal also exist in the school census return. It is therefore important that you complete the EY portal by close of 29th September.
7. Department for Education (DfE) Sign-in Portal – COLLECT
We are aware, that some schools, have in the past encountered difficulties with their COLLECT access. We therefore ask that you check your COLLECT access by logging in to the DfE Sign in Portal as soon as possible https://services.signin.education.gov.uk/.
8. Further Guidance
Our School Census Quick Guide, Supporting Guide (indicating census data items in sims) and checklist are available at School Census – Support for schools and settings (devon.gov.uk). CAPITA sims school census handbooks are available at the bottom of the Scomis school census webpage.
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)