Preparing for the school census

Check your recorded School Details by going to School > School Details. Ensure that your LA is filled in, Establishment Number, School telephone number and email address, Intake Gender, School phase, School type, Governance type, Intake type and URN all have information present (especially important to check if you have recently become an Academy).

You can see a list of potential duplicate students in School > Data > Data Quality Dashboard >Suspected Duplicates > Students.

You can then merge or delete these. Take a look at this article to see how to do this.

Top Tip: If you know that two students are duplicates but they aren't flagging as such, make sure their names are identical.

To check that all students have information entered for key Census fields, go to School > Data > Data Quality Dashboard > Students. This will open up three sections where you can update and add information - Contact Details, Identity and Demographics. Click into each to check your student data.

Top Tip: You’ll need the School: General Admin: Administer permission to access this area. If you don’t have permission, ask your office team to give it to you using these instructions.

Religion, country of birth and nationality are not reported in the census, so these fields are not required.

Assign UPN - Make sure all students have a UPN. If a student has no UPN against their profile they will show up in the list here. To generate a UPN for a student, use the bulk actions. 

To assign a known UPN to a student, add this from the Identity section of their student profile.

Update Basic Details - This allows you to quickly check that you have filled in some key information regarding students.

To add or change any of the information, just click on the cell you wish to edit and a slide over will appear where you can add or update the correct information. For example, to add an Ethnicity source, select the students then select Bulk Set Ethnicity to choose the source. 

For Nursery years: Update Funded Hours - Clicking on this will take you to a table that contains hours and funding information required in the School Census for Early Years and Nursery students. This data is not reported for 4-years-olds in Reception, so Reception students are not included in the table. For each individual student the number of funded hours allowed depends on the student's age and NC year. You can see full guidance on what to fill in from the DfE here: Funded hours

Please note, for students that are not entitled to extended hours paid for by the government, do not enter anything into the Extended hours field. Hours paid for by the child’s parents or the school should only contribute to the Hours at setting total.

You can update an individual student’s hours by clicking on their name. You’ll need to ask the parents if you do not know a child’s code.

You can also add some information in bulk, but you will still need to add the codes in by clicking on the students. 

If a student is 2 and has funded hours, you'll need to add a funding basis. Click the student's name to add a funding basis (this cannot be updated in bulk).

Update National Tutoring Programme Hours - If you have recorded a student as being in receipt of School Led Tutoring or National Tutoring Programme funding, you must add their number of tuition hours. You can see how to do this here: National and School Led Tutoring funding and teaching hours

For students 11+: Update YSSA - If you have students whose information you are sharing with Connexions etc make sure that this is noted in the Youth Support Services Agreement section.

If you’re not requesting this information, you can mark your students as Unsought.