The School Census is a statutory return for all maintained nursery, primary, secondary, middle-deemed primary, middle-deemed secondary, local authority (LA) maintained special and non-maintained special schools, academies (including Free Schools) and city technology colleges in England. Service children’s education schools may also return it on a voluntary basis.

The School Census collects information about individual pupils and information about the schools themselves, such as their educational provision. The individual pupil information collected includes free school meal eligibility, ethnicity, special educational needs (SEN), attendance and exclusions.

How is the data used?

The data is widely used by the Department’s policy divisions, other government departments, LAs, external agencies and educational researchers.

Analysis of individual pupil records supports the drive to raise standards, the accurate targeting of funding and the monitoring and development of policy.

For example:

  • Pupil numbers are used for funding LAs and schools, including the Dedicated Schools Grant and the Pupil Premium, and contribute to the school and college performance tables exercise.
  • Pupil numbers will be matched with data from the School Workforce Census to monitor pupil-to-adult ratios.
  • Information on class sizes, pupils with statements, pupils with SEN but without statements, free school meals, ethnicity, absences and permanent exclusions is used to monitor the Government’s social inclusion policy.

Without this information it would be very difficult for ministers, Parliament, central and local government, pressure groups and the public to monitor government policies and their effectiveness.

How is the data collected?

The data is collected via COLLECT, the Department’s centralised data collection and management system for education.

There has been an important change to the method of access and password administration for COLLECT. There is new system called Secure Access (SA), which provides a single, secure point of entry to departmental IT systems and ensures that the data is protected. SA will also allow users to manage password resets on a self-service basis, without helpdesk assistance.

Important dates for School Census 2013

The School Census is collected each term.

Term Census day (2013) Return deadline (2013) Database closure
Spring (January)  Thursday 17 January Wednesday 13 February* Friday 19 April
Summer (May) Thursday 16 May Wednesday 12 June Wednesday 3 July
Autumn (October) Thursday 3 October Wednesday 30 October Wednesday 27 November

Return deadlines are for approved submissions and schools are encouraged to make their initial return as soon as possible after the collection opens. LA maintained schools should check with their LA for any local return deadlines.

*Please note: the published guidance incorrectly states that the deadline for 100 per cent approved spring submissions is 20 February.

Census news

For census updates and reminders, please see the School Census 2013 news page, which you should check regularly while completing your school’s return.

Help and guidance

For instructions about completing the School Census, see:

For a quick reference guide to help schools and local authorities return the data required in the post-16 learning aims module of the School Census autumn 2013, see:

For user guides about duplicate reports, funding reports, acceptable notepad entries for validation queries and term-on-term queries, see:

For frequently asked questions, see

For COLLECT user guides, see:

The following technical tools and documents are also available:

Did you find what you were looking for? Speak to an advisor.

Contact us

Please use the service request form if you would like to change your contact details, or submit a query regarding School Census.

Please use the feedback request form if you have any comments about the content on this web page, the Data Collection Helpdesk service, the COLLECT system or any other aspect of our data collection service.