Logging and reporting on students in Kinship Care

Applies to: England schools 

This article explains how to record and report on which students are in a Kinship Care arrangement. 

From the Autumn 2026 School Census this information will be collected by the DfE. Schools in England are required to record whether a student is in a Kinship Care arrangement. 

Recording a Student's Kinship Care Status

Adding Kinship Care Status

• Go to the student's profile and go to the Background section. 
• Click on the Kinship Care field.
• In the slideover, you can see any past statuses and record a new one with the Add Kinship Care Status button.
• Select the relevant arrangement type from the dropdown, add the start date (and end date if applicable), and click Save.

The student will then have a demographic indicator tag for Kinship Care.

Editing the Status

You can see the current status on their profile, or click it to edit from the Background section.

In the slideover, select a past status from the Status History, or click Edit to change the current status.

Reporting on Students in Kinship Care (coming soon)

Search by Kinship Care Demographics

Click into the demographic filters on pages that have them (like the Attendance Statistics page) to select Kinship Care.

In the Custom Report Writer

When creating a custom report about Students, you can add a column to see which students are in Kinship Care or not. 

Example report:
 

FAQ

Do we need to record this for Nursery students?

This information is not required for Nursery schools and will not be included in the census return for those schools.

What are the codes?

The Kinship Care indicator is collected in the Autumn School Census only. Depending on the status recorded for a student on census day, one of the following values will be output:

• For students with no status recorded, or a status of Not declared, they will be output as ND
• For students with a formal kinship arrangement recorded, they will be output as KF
• For students with an informal kinship arrangement recorded, they will be output as KI
• For students where kinship has been identified but the type of arrangement is unknown, they will be output as KU