School Census
News Bulletin
Reference: SC 2015-08 (LA)
Issued to: All Local
Authorities, Direct Grant
Nurseries, Service Children
Education and Schools MI
suppliers
Education Data Division
Issue Date: 28/04/2015
2015 SUMMER SCHOOL CENSUS –
Readiness email No.1
Issue Date: 13/12/2013
Contents
1. Purpose
2. Data collection timetable and key dates
3. Main changes from summer school census 2014
4. Summer census COLLECT familiarisation
5. Secure access (SA)
6. COLLECT downtime
7. 2014-15 census guides
8. Summer census MS Access database
9. School census information video
10. 2015 spring census
11. Data collection forum
12. Support
1.
Purpose
The purpose of this note is to provide school census contacts with important information in
readiness for the 2015 summer school census. This will be the first in a series of bulletins and
therefore provides some basic information about the summer school census including
arrangements around COLLECT familiarisation.
2.
Data collection timetable and key dates
The census date for the 2015 summer school census is Thursday 21 May 2015 with the
deadline for approved submissions being Wednesday 17 June 2015.
A full list of the key dates for the 2015 summer school census is provided below:
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Census date - Thursday 21 May 2015;
Return date (100% approved) – Wednesday 17 June 2015;
Database closed to schools and LAs – Wednesday 8 July 2015;
Database closed – Friday 10 July 2015;
3.
Main changes from summer school census 2014
3.1
New data items introduced
3.1.1 School lunch taken
This data item indicates whether a pupil has taken a ‘school lunch’ on census day; where
‘school lunch’ is defined as food made available by the school for consumption by the pupil as
his/her midday meal on a school day. As this data item relates to lunches on census day it is
not anticipated that schools will be in a position to complete this data item until the lunch take
up of infant pupils on census day is known.
This data item will be collected from all school types for the following pupils only regardless of
whether they are FSM eligible or not:
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all pupils on roll on census day in reception (ie NCYearActual = ‘R’)
all pupils on roll on census day in year 1 (ie NCYearActual = ‘1’)
all pupils on roll on census day in year 2 (ie NCYearActual = ‘2’)
all pupils on roll on census day aged 4 to 6 not following the national curriculum in
reception (NCYearActual = ‘X’ AND pupil born between 1 September 2007 and 31 August
2010 inclusive )
Please note that where a pupil is in receipt of a school lunch (i.e. school lunch taken is
TRUE) this does not mean that the pupil should also be recorded as eligible for free
school meals. Pupils in receipt of a free lunch as part of the infant pupil universal lunch
entitlement should only be recorded as FSM eligible where the pupil meets the FSM
eligibility criteria and has made a claim.
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3.1.2 School childcare
Information concerning the childcare offered by schools has been introduced on a voluntary
basis as a one-off collection in the 2015 summer census before being collected annually via the
spring census on a mandatory basis from 2016 onwards. Due to the voluntary nature of the
collection for summer 2015, and the lateness of when the requirement was released to software
suppliers, it may be possible that the functionality to return these data items is not included
within your management information system (MIS).
This module comprises of a number data items which act together to record where a school
provides, or signposts, childcare provision and the nature of that provision. Please refer to the
school census guides on the department’s website for further information.
3.2
Existing data items
3.2.1 Special educational needs (SEN)
A new code of practice came into effect from September 2014 which removed the requirement
for separate ‘school action’ and ‘school action plus’ categories – these were replaced by a
single ‘SEN support’ category. ‘SEN statements’ were also replaced with ‘education, health and
care plans’ as part of the Children and Families Bill.
During the transitional period up to April 2018 schools will be able to record pupils as having
either ‘S’ - statement or ‘E’ - EHC plan. Schools may have some pupils with statements and
some who have already moved to EHC plans but no individual pupil can have both. An EHC
plan is not just the rebadging of a statement. A transition review must take place before
a pupil is moved to an EHC plan.
The department expects the conversion from SA and SA+ to SEN support to be completed by
the January census for most pupils on the assumption that most schools conduct reviews of
SEN pupils within a term. However it is recognised that this may not be the case for all schools
and a transitional period to the end of the 2014/2015 school year is provided to allow all
conversions to be completed. However any new, newly identified or reviewed pupils must be
recorded under the SEN support category, rather than as ‘SA’ or ‘SA+’
3.2.2 Free school meals eligibility
There have been NO changes to the recording of pupils as eligible for free school meals
following the introduction of universal infant free school meals from September 2014. As with
before, each of the census collections requires the inclusion of any periods of free school meal
(FSM) eligibility since the previous census for those pupils on roll on census day; this may
include periods of FSM eligibility prior to pupils joining the current school. Pupils may only be
recorded as FSM eligible if they meet the FSM eligibility criteria (ie in respect to family income)
and make a claim. Pupils who are only in receipt of a free school lunch due to the infant
pupil universal entitlement should not be recorded as FSM eligible and therefore will not
be eligible to receive pupil premium funding.
4.
Summer census COLLECT familiarisation
A ‘beta’ release of the 2015 summer school census ‘live’ COLLECT blade is now available for
you to become familiar with. This blade will remain available until 4pm on Friday 15 May 2015
at which point the blade will be removed and cleared out in advance of the start of the live
collection on Thursday 21 May 2015.
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The department would strongly recommend that, where possible, all schools take the chance to
load a file output from their MIS into the COLLECT familiarisation blade. This will allow them to
double check that all the required data is being output correctly from their MIS into the summer
census return and will allow them to check whether any validation errors or queries are
generated against their data when loaded into COLLECT which need to be resolved before the
collection goes live. This will be especially important for any schools completing the summer
school census for the first time.
Please note that during familiarisation there will be no functionality to run the same COLLECT
reports that will be available during the live collection as these will still be undergoing
development and testing and will not be available until the collection goes live.
5.
Secure access (SA)
Secure access provides local authorities and schools with a single, secure point of entry to
departmental IT systems (currently includes COLLECT, school 2 school (s2s) and Key to
Success (KtS)) and to ensure that the data that they hold is much better protected.
If you are a new maintained school or academy (including sponsor led, convertor, alternative
provision (AP) free schools, university technical colleges (UTCs) and studio schools) you will
need to contact the secure access helpdesk as the department will need to set up a new SA
approver account. The ‘approver’ will be responsible for adding, editing or removing other user
accounts for their organisation. The approver will also be responsible for controlling their access
to school to school (s2s), Key to Success (KtS), COLLECT and other applications (where
applicable), even if the approver does not have access to these applications themselves. SA
approvers can be assigned by providing the details for the proposed approver via the SA
service request form.
Once the account has been set up and the SA approver has been assigned, it is important that
they add any other users who will require access to any of the relevant systems. For example if
the head teacher is the ‘approver’ but does not complete the school census it is important that
they create a new SA user account and link the user to the COLLECT school census groups,
otherwise you will not be able to access COLLECT.
Further guidance regarding the ‘approver’ can be found within the SA Approver Guide.
6.
COLLECT downtime
COLLECT will be unavailable on from 15:00 to 17:00 on Friday 8 May while we
undertake essential maintenance.
We apologise for any inconvenience caused.
7.
2014-15 census guides
A set of user guides to assist schools and local authorities with completing the 2015 summer
school census is available on the department’s website. These are the latest guides available
and should be your first point of reference for any census queries you may have. We would like
to remind all schools and local authorities to ensure that they are using the latest version of
these documents and any previous versions held locally are removed.
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8.
Summer census MS Access database
We would like to take this opportunity to confirm that a MS Access database for the 2015
summer census will be made available to local authorities on request prior to the census going
live in May. Further details on the distribution arrangements will be communicated in
subsequent bulletins.
9.
School census information video
The department have recently produced a video intended to provide background to the school
census, details on how the data is used and guidance on how to access and use COLLECT.
This data is published on the EFA website and, whilst it is primarily aimed at academies and
free schools, the content will be equally relevant to local authority schools that make returns
directly in COLLECT. It is our intention to produce further videos in advance of the autumn
census. Please click here to view the video.
10.
2015 spring census
This is a reminder that the spring school census will be removed from COLLECT at 4pm on 8
May 2015. If you want to take a copy of your spring census data please do so by this date
as this will be the last opportunity to get an export of your data before the database is archived.
Once the database has been archived, the department will not retain the functionality to perform
COLLECT exports on your behalf.
11.
Data collection forum
We have introduced a revised data collection forum that all local authority contacts and nonmaintained establishments (academies, free schools, UTCs, studio schools, non-maintained
special schools and independent schools) can access.
The purpose of the forum is to provide a facility to allow customers to exchange ideas and good
practice relating to specific data collections and related EDD systems (eg COLLECT, school to
school).
The main features of the forum are:
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ability to view posts;
ability to post questions to the community;
ability to comment or answer other users questions and discuss issues.
The forum is available at here and you will require a username and password specific to the
forum to access. If you do not already have a username and password and would like to
request access, or if you have any questions about the facility, please complete a service
request form.
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12.
Support
As always, if you have any queries about any of the points covered in this note, COLLECT or
school census in general, please use the data collections service request form.
Please use the feedback form if you have any comments about the data collection content on
the web site, the service offered by the data collection helpdesk, the COLLECT system or any
other aspect of our data collection service.
Thank you in advance
Data Collections Helpdesk
© Crown copyright 2015
You may re-use this information (not including logos) free of charge in any format or medium, under the
terms of the Open Government Licence.
To view this licence, visit http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/ or write to
the Information Policy Team, The National Archives, Kew, London TW9 4DU, or e-mail:
[email protected]
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