Excluding staff or contracts from the Workforce Census

Most UK schools have to submit a Workforce Census return. The Workforce Census collects information on staff contracts for full and part-time teachers, teaching assistants and other support staff that are employed by schools.

School workforce level data is required for teachers and support staff that work for schools if they are in regular service. Staff are in regular service if they have completed service of 28 days or more with the school, or are expected to do so, before the end of their contract or service agreement.

As such, you may wish to exclude certain individual staff members or staff members who have similar contracts. In the case where our staff contracts are held in a system other than Arbor, you may wish to exclude your contracts entirely from your Census return. Please note that with option three, the LA and DfE will still require your Contract information to be submitted separately to your Arbor census return. See each section below to find out how to exclude staff from your Census return.

If you are unsure whether a staff member or particular job role should be included in the Census, contact your Local Authority or the DfE. 

For more guidance on who should be included in the Workforce Census, take a look at the DfE's Workforce Census Guide section 4.

Excluding all staff contracts

If your school submits their Staff Contracts using another system external to Arbor, you can choose to discount all staff contracts from your Workforce census.

Please note: If you decide to exclude Contract details from your Workforce Census, your Census will instead pull data relating to business Roles. This means you must ensure that all staff are assigned the correct Business Role. 

To discount all staff contracts from your Workforce census you will need to contact us via email.

Please include in this email:

• Your School
• Written consent from your Data Controller
• Why you want to discount all staff contracts from your Workforce census

Please note, you may still encounter some queries flagged on your Census regarding contracts. In this case, when submitting your census to COLLECT you will need to add a validation note that your school records contracts elsewhere.

Discounting certain staff members

For more guidance on who should be included in the Workforce Census, take a look at the DfE's Workforce Census Guide section 4.

Go to the staff member's Staff Profile and scroll down to the Employment & Financial section. Click the Include in school workforce census field.

Untick the Include box then click Save Changes. the staff member will no longer be included in your census.

You can also do this by selecting Contracts from the left-hand menu.

Discounting certain contracts

The option above only discounts a staff member completely, not individual contracts. If you need to discount one of a staff member's contracts, or if you have many staff members who have casual zero-hours contracts, you can discount contracts using contract Position Categories.

Go to School > All staff > HR Admin > Positions. Here you can see all the current Positions in use in contracts, the number of staff members with this position, the Position Category and the Census Business Role.

To discount multiple contracts from the Workforce census, tick the boxes next to all the positions then click the blue pencil icon.

For the Position Category, select Not included in School Workforce census (XXX). You do not need to provide a Census Role Identifier. Then click Save Changes.

Contracts with these positions will now no longer appear in the Workforce census.