Statutory census dates for maintained schools, academies and free schools

In the January edition of Heads Up, there was an article about the collection of data for the statutory school census on 19 January.

Maintained schools send their data to the LA, who then ‘clean’ the data by dealing with any anomalies or data issues, so they can send error-free information to the DfE. Schools return the data to the LA by the deadline of the day following the census day.

Academies and free schools send their returns directly to the DfE. They are responsible for ‘cleaning’ their own data anomalies. At the same time that they send the data to the DfE, they send a copy to the LA.  It is only at the point that the academy schools copy their data to the LA that the LA can process and formulate all the Warwickshire data. They need a full set of data to do this, which includes data from academies.

For the autumn term and spring term census dates, there is no issue. However, for the May census, there is a big issue regarding the data, because of returns to the DfE for pupil test and teacher assessment data. 

Although maintained schools return their census data by the next day in May, academies and free schools have several weeks more to return their data to the DfE direct. This means the LA cannot use the May census data for checking submissions to NCA (National Curriculum Assessment) tools, meaning they have to use the January data set which is very out of date.

We would therefore like to encourage ALL schools with pupils in Y6 and Y2 to return their May census data as quickly as possible, and before data submission to NCA tools, if at all possible.

Data submitted as part of the May school census will be used in the validation and moderation processes for the statutory primary assessment returns.

The Local Authority acts as the agent on behalf of the DfE therefore by submitting your May school census return promptly, we will be able to better support you with any school census queries.

If you are an academy or free school and would like to know more about our request, please contact Debbie Hibberd 01926 743015 to discuss it further.