School census

Autumn school census 2025

The summer autumn census will take place on Thursday 2 October 2025.

We ask schools to return their census by Friday 3 October 2025.

We also continue to request that academies submit their return promptly on COLLECT and send us a full CSV export of their census submission as early as possible after census day.

We highly recommend that you perform a trial run prior to census day. Then, hopefully on 2 October it will just be a case of running the census and submitting it to the LA (or the DfE for academies).

DfE have a familiarisation blade for each Census available a few weeks before the live collection, so you can use it to check your data in advance of the census. The familiarisation blade will remain available until 4pm on the Friday before census week (26 September), and DfE strongly recommends that schools use this facility to check their own data in advance of the collection going live on the 2 October.

Changes from 2024-25

English and maths minimum hours (FAO High Schools)

Prior to the 2025 to 2026 academic year, non-compliant students were those without a GCSE grade 9 to 4 in maths or English who did not enrol in an approved qualification in these subjects.

From the 2025 to 2026 academic year, the additional requirements to be compliant are that:

• students without a GCSE grade 9 to 4 in English or maths must be enrolled in approved qualifications
• students’ planned hours for English or maths must meet the minimum teaching hours via the required mode of delivery

Students recorded as enrolled in an approved qualification will be included in the maths and English condition of funding calculation as non-compliant if:

• their planned hours for the subject are below the minimum teaching hours
• they do not comply with the required mode of delivery
• their planned hours meet the minimum, but the qualification is not eligible

DfE are collecting data to indicate whether or not the student has at least the minimum teaching hours planned for an eligible maths or English qualification. This will be added to Learner Funding and Monitoring section as 2 new types:
EMH - English minimum hours

MMH -Maths minimum hours

Ensure you familiarise with these new requirements and where to find it in your own MIS.

Expanded Hours (FAO schools with Nursery Classes)

Expanded Hours item has been amended to allow up to 30 hours to be claimed, following the policy change from September 2025.

View changes here: Complete the school census - Changes for 2025 to 2026 - Guidance - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)(link is external)

Checking your return

Please ensure you check your return thoroughly before submitting, and once you have submitted your return on COLLECT that you review any errors or queries and take the appropriate action or add an appropriate note. The COLLECT help guides below provide guidance on how to view your errors and queries, how to add notes on COLLECT and how to view your reports.

Please also ensure you check all of your reports on COLLECT to make sure you are happy with your submission – in particular you must resolve any pupils who appear on your duplicate reports between yourselves and another school.

Here is the DfE guidance on checking your data(link is external).

FAO High Schools- post 16 data (Autumn only) checking

DfE have updated their post-16 interactive tool to support the return of accurate post-16 school census data.

Some schools risk not getting the funding they should because of inaccurate data.

This tool will help you understand:

• how your data is used to calculate your post-16 funding
• how common data errors affect your funding

DfE have noted that providers have had issues recording T Level data correctly, including:

• recording programmes that only last for 1 year, rather than 2
• recording planned hours that fall below the minimum for T Level funding

The tool has information on how DfE use T Level data, and how incorrect data will affect funding. There is also specific information on recording T Level data.

A suite of post-16 funding reports will be available in COLLECT when the autumn census opens in October.

They will show you how your data looks in relation to the DfE post-16 funding calculations. Schools should use these reports to help with quality assurance of census returns.

Where does school census data go?(link is external) (pdf)
This document provides information on what your census data is used for and why it is important to submit accurately and on time

Training

We recommend that you keep up to date on new developments with school census by attending training where provided by your MIS support provider.

DFE specifications

The DfE are no longer producing pdf booklet guidance, instead guidance is available on the following link:

Complete the school census(link is external) (GOV.UK)

If you require any information regarding MIS file versions or where data should be entered, or how to run the census within your MIS please refer to your MIS technical support provider.

COLLECT help guides

• Viewing your errors and queries in COLLECT(link is external) (pdf)
• Adding notes for queries in COLLECT(link is external) (pdf)
• Moving a child from OnRoll to OffRoll on COLLECT(link is external) (pdf)
• Sending a CSV export of your school census to the Local Authority (for academies)(link is external) (pdf)
• Viewing your school census report on COLLECT(link is external) (pdf)

Further COLLECT help guides are available on request for maintained schools and academies who buy in to the ELP or data service (including guidance on amending FSM eligibility, learning aims, enrolment status, part time flag, hours at setting/funded/extended/expanded hours, school arranged AP details, SEN top up funding flag and UPN).