School Workforce Census – checklist – all schools

Use this check list to tick off each of the tasks once they have been completed

• Check your COLLECT access by logging in to DfE sign in. If you have forgotten your password or username please report this to the DfE via the log-in page immediately.
• Check you have upgraded to SIMS v7.194 or later. Scomis apply this automatically for hosted schools. Non hosted schools need to apply this themselves, see Scomis website.

Check that the latest fileset version has been imported (1606 at the time of publishing), please see Scomis website.

Preparing the census data

• Are you complying with GDPR and Data Protection? Are privacy notices in place for all members of staff? See page 5 of our guide for further information.
• Ensure you know who to include and exclude from the census, see pages 6 and 7 and Annex 1 of our guide (page 32).
• Are all your staff details up to date and correct? see Annex 2 in our guide (page 35).
• Have you updated your staff’s records where base pay has changed? see page 11 of our guide.
• Do you have any persons with more than one contract? some might not be applicable for the census, see page 7 of our guide for instructions.
• Do you have any persons who are ‘Acting Up’? some of their contract information might need amending, see page 8 of our guide.
• Does your census include a member of staff with the role of SENCO? – DfE advise that schools must have a staff member with this role. See page 9 of our guide.
• Have you recorded Teacher vacancies in the census? see page 20 of the guidance notes and Annex 4 for flowchart (page 39) on vacancies.
• Have you recorded any supply/occasional teachers who were in school on census day within the census?
• Are you a federated school and sending in one file for all schools in the federation? – if yes, please follow our additional instructions (page 13 of our guide) and our federations checklist (available on our website).
• Do all members of staff in your census have a contract? check table A of your summary report.
• Carry out a dry run to check what information needs to be amended. Our guide on running the census can be found on our webpage.

Producing the census

• Do you have any errors? these need to be cleared before uploading your return – please click into each one to resolve – see page 22 of our guide.
• Do you have any queries? – (number ending with ‘Q’) – Where queries are correct they can remain but a note needs to be added in COLLECT (once you have uploaded your file), please only use the acceptable notes listed in our guide.
• Have you printed and checked the summary and detailed reports? (liaising with your headteacher).
• 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).

Return

• Returns should be uploaded and submitted in COLLECT.
• Check for errors/queries in COLLECT: click the ‘All Errors’ button and add appropriate acceptable notes, available here on the government website.

The Education Information Team will email a data checking report to your school, 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 DfE.