School Workforce Census – Bulletin 1

School Workforce Census – 5th November 2020

1. Dates

We appreciate that the School Census is your current priority.  However we wanted to highlight the workforce census to you so you could add it to your calendar:

census date: Thu 5th Nov 2020   upload by: Fri 13th Nov 2020

2. Teacher Pay Ranges

The Department of Education have recently published the Teachers Pay and Conditions for 2020 which includes information on teachers’ pay ranges.  As this information is collected in the workforce census in November, could all schools please ensure that their pay ranges in sims have been updated (if agreed within your school).

Last year many schools generated queries in the COLLECT Credibility reports as this information had not been updated in sims. We therefore strongly recommend that schools update their pay ranges before uploading a Workforce Census return to COLLECT.  Please see additional information regarding Teacher Pay Ranges here:  Teacher Pay Range information.

3. Changes to data items for 2020

To help reduce the burden during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Department for Education have reduced the data collected in this School Workforce Census. The following items will not be required;

• Absence data
• Qualification data
• Date of last pay review
• ‘Subject’ and ‘Tenure’ (within vacancy data)
• Data on third party support staff is not required, though data on occasional teachers is still needed.

For these specific data items not required for 2020;

• if your processes and systems make it easier to submit the unrequired data items, then you can return the data to the DfE. The DfE will not use such data and, as soon as practicable, will delete it.
• if it is easier for your systems and processes to not collect the unrequired data items, then it will not be required or requested.

This only applies to the data specifically pointed out above as not required. For other data the DfE will expect that to be returned to the highest standards.

Sims users: CAPITA have not yet released any information on how these changes to the Workforce Census will be accommodated in sims. We will provide an update as soon as possible. In the meantime you can check the Scomis website for updates here: Scomis Website

4. Further Guidance

The Education Information Team’s School Workforce Census guide will be available on our website within the forthcoming weeks;

Devon School Workforce Census website

The Department for Education School Workforce Census guide is available via the following weblink;

DfE School Workforce Census guide

Scomis maintain a School Workforce Census Bulletin website which has latest information on known issues, changes and filesets:

Scomis Workforce Census Bulletin

If you have any queries, please email census@devon.gov.uk and someone within the Education Information Team will be in touch.

Kind regards,

Education Information Team
census@devon.gov.uk