Categories:
Headteacher, Data Manager

Spring School Census

Spring School Census – Key Dates and Guidance

Dear Colleague

Spring School Census Day is Thursday 16 January 2026. Access to the COLLECT website will be available on that day.

The authorised file needs to be sent via the COLLECT website by the end of Wednesday 21 January 2026, ensuring all errors are addressed or explained via email to the Data Analysis Team so that the team can add notes and the errors can be authorised by the DfE.

The DfE’s deadline for approved submissions is Wednesday 11 February (for Academies and LAs). This gives the LAs time to ensure all errors are checked and notes added where necessary. Unfortunately, the team do not usually see any notes added to your own system, only those added to COLLECT.

If you are unsure about any of the errors and queries, we can help. As part of the authorisation process, the headteacher is responsible for verifying the census summary and the reports. By uploading the return, it is being acknowledged that the headteacher is happy with the data in the return.

Complete the school census – Guidance – GOV.UK

To do:

  • Send the completed Census file to Oxfordshire LA via COLLECT (please make sure you upload the file with the XML suffix).
  • Run and check reports on COLLECT the day after submission; reports will also need to be run again the day after any amendments are made on COLLECT.
  • Send an email to the team email address (dataanalysisteam@oxfordshire.gov.uk) to explain any queries that you are happy are correct.

Spring Census COLLECT Familiarisation

A ‘beta’ release of the 2026 spring school census live COLLECT blade is now available for you to become familiar with. This will remain available until 4 on Friday 9 January, at which point the blade will be removed and cleared out in advance of the start of the live collection on Thursday 15 January.

The DfE strongly recommends that, if possible, all schools take the chance to load a file output from their management information system (MIS) into COLLECT during the familiarisation process. This will allow schools to check that all the required data is being output correctly from their MIS into the spring census return and 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 spring school census for the first time.

COLLECT familiarisation will take place on the same system as the live collection and, therefore, can be accessed by logging into COLLECT via DfE sign-in in the same manner as you would for the live collection.

In previous collections the use of the school census familiarisation blade has been extremely low, therefore if the number of users continues to be low again this collection, the DfE will look to undertake a consultation about the future of this service.

Many thanks
Margaret and Debbie
Data Analysis Team