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All schools - Headteachers, Bursars, Finance Officers

School Workforce Census 7 November

The School Workforce Census (SWC) is a statutory return and each School is therefore required by law to submit a return. 

The DfE have advised there have been some minimal changes (listed below) and note the continued need for Qualification and Absence data to be collected as well as the field ‘Newly Qualified Teacher’ which has been added to track whether NQTs or ECT (Early Career Teachers as they are now referred to) are in their first or second year of induction.:

Changes:

  • Sex has replaced gender in the data collection. 
  • Guidance on information needed on staff with closed contracts has been strengthened.

Guidance document:  School workforce Census 2024

Census day is 7 November 2024.

The deadline for uploading your return onto COLLECT is 20 November 2024

Every school is required by law to submit a return.

As previously advised, schools should continue to use their MIS to generate the return.  To help you ensure all the details have been added correctly you can use the system’s Census Summary Reports.

The process for maintained schools will be as follows:

  1. School updates records in their MIS and uploads their return

Regardless of which MIS you use you will need to ensure that records are complete in order to complete your return.

Your MIS support provider will be able to support you with the use of the Schools Workforce Census functionality to generate your return.

You can access information held on the IBC portal which may be useful, if you have gaps in your MIS data (that need new data input.) Both Salary reports contain useful data and can be found in the Finance folder. The Attendance & Absence report may also provide useful information. In addition the maintain HR Data tile is a place where you can find information about individual members of staff such as their contract type, additional payments, DfE number for example.

You will be able to upload your return to the Department for Education COLLECT website from 7 November 2024.

NB:  The deadline for uploading your return onto COLLECT is 20 November 2024 – this allows Oxfordshire County Council to check and authorise the return for submission.  Any errors should be corrected prior to uploading into COLLECT.  Returns with errors will be rejected by the DfE.

  1. Oxfordshire County Council will check your return

When you upload your return to the COLLECT website, the county council will check your return.  If a return has errors, schools should check with their support provider for guidance as a return with errors will be rejected by the DfE. 

A query is only acceptable if it reflects the situation in school and can be explained, eg 7240Q – Please note this return contains no vacancies (ie there are no vacancies in school on Census Day)

The council will identify any gaps or issues, ask you to resolve them and to upload your return again.

Once your return has been validated by the council, they will authorise your return within COLLECT.

  1. You can find more information, including instructions for schools on how to complete the School Workforce Census here.

Important notes on data completion

  • Make sure that all new starters have been entered in the School MIS.  A correct Department for Education teacher reference number (TRN) must be provided for every teacher. For teachers that have recently started in your employment the TRN can be obtained in one of three ways:
    • by checking with the NCTL register of qualified teachers
    • notifying Capita teachers pensions of the appointment 
    • the teacher may have a record of the number that they can provide from their  award of qualified teacher status or teachers pensions benefits statement.
  • Please note that schools direct trainees (salaried) are within the scope of the school workforce census and must be included in schools’ returns where they are in service.
  • It is a statutory requirement under section 67 of the Children and Families Act 2014 for every mainstream school and maintained nursery to have a designated special educational needs coordinator (SENCO) who is a qualified teacher working in the school. Please identify the designated SEN-coordinator for each school in the role field in the SWC return. More than one role can be attached to each staff member’s contract information as appropriate.
  • Base pay should be updated in your Management Information System annually (ie after September teacher pay award) – this ensures that the correct pay details will be collected in the school workforce census. As the pay award for this year has not yet been implemented you can use the 2023/24 pay data for the base pay data
  • The base pay provided for part-time staff must be the actual annual salary in payment and not the full-time equivalent salary upon which the actual salary is based. Basic pay should not include any additional pay or allowances – where there are additional payments these should be recorded in the relevant panel of the staff member’s contract against the correct category. 
  • Please do not report individual staff contracts in the SWC showing zero hours worked per week. This could include any staff employed on flexible ‘zero hours’ arrangements where the hours worked cannot be determined or teachers listed in a local authority supply pool. Where this applies to a teacher and they are in school on the day of the census they should be included in the occasional teacher count. 
  • Please ensure that every role reported within a contract is appropriate to the post recorded. We find that in some contracts with the post of teacher they have a single support staff or teaching assistant role attached. This makes the true nature of the contract ambiguous. If, for example, a teacher also has a secondary support staff role this secondary role preferably should be recorded as a second contract. Alternatively a second support role may be added to the single contract with the first being a teaching role.
  • Please ensure that the required data set is completed for each member of staff, including the contract. 
  • The feedback we continue to receive shows that our qualification data is very poor. While qualification data was not required in the 2020 Census, we hope that you continued to collect it.  Once the data is updated in your management information system, it can be used for future years.
  • Absence data is crucial for your own records.  We have anticipated you will have continued to maintain accurate absence data
  •  Don’t forget changes to School Business Professionals.

 

Starter and Leaver Information, absence Data and Establishment details

Schools can request these reports from schoolworkforcecensus@oxfordshire.gov.uk

 

Submitting your return

You must submit your data using COLLECT, our centralised data collection and management system. A separate COLLECT guide will be available to help you use the system to complete and submit your return, we will continue to publish and update information and guidance on the website as it becomes available so we suggest you continue to view the school workforce webpage.

You should contact your Secure Access approver(s) if you need a user name and password to submit data for the SWF 2024 collection.

Usernames and passwords for COLLECT are managed by the DfE Sign-in system. Your school has a delegated approver(s) who can allocate you access to departmental systems that use DfE Sign-in.

Any queries can be submitted to schoolworkforcecensus@oxfordshire.gov.uk and we aim to respond to them within 2 working days.

 

 

HR Manager Business Systems