School workforce census: guide to submitting data

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The school workforce census is a statutory data collection that takes place each autumn. You must complete statutory censuses by law unless there鈥檚 a good reason not to.

The census collects data on all teaching and support staff in regular employment, including those working for:

local authorities on central contracts
local-authority-maintained schools
academies
free schools, including:
- studio schools
- university technical colleges
pupil referral units (local authority establishments that provide education for children who cannot attend a mainstream school)

Local authorities are responsible for:

co-ordinating and approving the submission of census data from all their maintained schools
submitting data for centrally employed school staff

Academies are responsible for submitting and approving their own census data.

Local authorities, local-authority-maintained schools and academies should issue privacy notices to all members of staff. Privacy notices inform staff members about the details of the census and their rights under the Data Protection Act.

You can find earlier versions of this page on the UK Government Web Archive.

Important dates

Dates for the 2024 census:

census day is 7 November 2024
deadline for submitting your data is 6 December 2024

Submit your data

You鈥檒l need to:

register and log in with DfE Sign-in
use COLLECT to submit your data

Contact your school or local authority approver, if:

you want to request a DfE Sign-in username or password so you can access COLLECT
鈥榮chool workforce census鈥� is not on the list of collections you can see in COLLECT

If you do not know who your approver is, use the DfE Sign-in request form.

If you鈥檝e forgotten your password, use DfE Sign-in to reset it. You will need to click 鈥楽tart now鈥� and then the 鈥業鈥檝e forgotten my password鈥� link.

We鈥檒l only be able to change the status of your data submission to 鈥榓uthorised鈥� once you鈥檝e cleared all errors in the data in COLLECT.

School workforce census documents

These documents will help you complete the census:

If you wish to request XSLT files for the validation rules and school summary report, contact the data collection helpdesk via the service request form.

Help submitting data

Use the service request form if you have any questions about your data. We aim to answer your question within 5 working days.

Use the feedback form if you have any comments about our data collection service, including COLLECT and the helpdesk service.

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