Hello, my name is Ann Tailford and I work in the Education Data Division at the Department
for Education. I’m here to talk to you about the school level information you are required
to submit as part of your school census. This is one of a series of videos related to the
school census and should be watched in conjunction with the others.
This slide lists the topic areas I will be covering in the presentation.
Information on admission appeals is collected from schools that were responsible for their
own appeals, relating to appeals against applicants not having received a requested offer of a
place for the start of the current academic year.
Information about appeals is required from academies as well as voluntary aided and foundation
schools. Only appeals which were the responsibility of the school’s governing body are included.
However, where a school has contracted another agency, such as their home local authority,
to administer their admissions appeals process, as long as the school’s governance code
is ‘VA’, ‘FO’ or ‘CA’, the school must still provide the information as part
of their spring census. If your school operates arrangements jointly with other schools, your
return will only include appeals for your school.
Spring census collects mandatory information on childcare services provided or signposted
by schools. The Department will use the data to help evaluate the impact of policies on
the number of schools providing childcare and track progress against our aim to increase the numbers.
The requirement is that there should be four records returned for type of childcare – one
for each of the Before School, After School, Holiday and Under 5s categories. A ‘yes’
or ‘no’ should be provided for each record as to whether the school provides or signposts
to this type of childcare with further information required where any ‘yes’ replies are provided.
The following slides provide brief descriptions of the definitions of the different types
of childcare. Please refer to the school census guide for further information.
The School Admissions (Infant Class Sizes) (England) Regulations 2012 limits the size
of an infant class during an ordinary teaching session to 30 pupils per school teacher. Infant
classes are those in which the majority of children turn 5, 6 or 7 during the course
of the school year, that is, reception and key stage 1 classes.
Primary and all-through schools with infant classes are asked to ensure that the selected
period is one in which their infant classes are engaged in an ordinary teaching session.
This does not include school assembly or any other school activity usually conducted with
large groups of children. If, at the time of the count, infant class children would
normally be involved in such an activity, the count is deferred to the next ordinary teaching
session. This change of selected time is enacted for all classes in the school, not just the
infant classes. The infant class size limit is based on the
pupil:teacher ratio and not the pupil:adult ratio. Therefore, regardless of how many teaching
assistants are in the class, it will be treated as unlawful
if there are more than 30 pupils with 1 teacher.
Infant class size legislation makes allowance for the entry of an additional child in very
limited circumstances where it would be detrimental to his or her interests not to admit them.
These are referred to as ‘excepted pupils’. The next two slides provide details of what
the Department defines as ‘excepted pupils’. Please note that admissions under ‘Fair
Access’ protocols are not classed as exceptions and should therefore not be recorded as such.
When a key stage 1 and/or a reception class reports 31 or more pupils per teacher, a class
size validation query will appear on the schools return.
When investigating the query this process below must be followed:
- Check whether any of the pupils in the class have been admitted as exceptions. If so these
must be recorded under the appropriate exception category within the class record in COLLECT.
Check whether the teacher is on planning and preparation time or learning manager time
and the class is being supervised by a teaching assistant. If so, the teacher must be recorded
in the PPA field within the class record in COLLECT.
If you have completed the above actions correctly the query will disappear. Please note that
the ability to record exceptions and PPA is not available on your school MIS and can only
be recorded in COLLECT.
If a class is reported as having 31 or more pupils and does not have any exceptions then
a notepad explanation must be provided. To enable the Department to authorise your return
you must ensure that you provide further information as to the reason why the class is unlawfully
large. An explanation simply confirming the data as correct will not be accepted
by the Department.
As the Department provides instructions on how to edit your data, including specific
guidance around infant class sizes, it is the school’s responsibility as data owners
to ensure that any exceptions are recorded correctly within class records in COLLECT.
The Department will not be in a position to amend a school’s data where exceptions are
described in notepad explanations.
To assist you in identifying infant classes in breach of the legal limit of 30 pupils
per single teacher, a report is available in COLLECT. The report can be run by pressing
the ‘launch reports’ button in COLLECT and selecting the ‘unlawful infant class report’.
New validation was introduced from Autumn 2016 census which checks the school governance
returned as part of the census against the type of establishment information held in
EduBase. If this information does not match, a validation query will be triggered. Where
the information provided in the census return is incorrect, this should be updated in the
school’s MIS and the return resubmitted. If, however the information held on EduBase
is incorrect because the school has changed type and this has not been updated within
the school record on EduBase, then the school or local authority should email the address
shown on the slide, attaching the statutory notice, proposal and eventual decision record.
The school organisation team will then update the school record on EduBase.
Please note that until either COLLECT or EduBase is updated and the two data items match, the
validation query will remain.
This slide provides links which you may require before and during the ‘live’ collection.
More information about how to submit your census data to us, including details about
what data is collected for each termly school census, can be found on the school census page.
Please take some time to read these documents, as they are designed to help you fulfil your
statutory requirements and successfully complete and submit an accurate set of census data.
In addition to the online documents we also provide a data collection forum.
The purpose of the forum is to provide a facility to allow customers to exchange ideas and good
practice relating to specific data collections and related EDD systems
(e.g. COLLECT, school to school).
You will require a username and password to access the forum. If you do not already have a
username and password, or if you have any questions about the facility,
please complete a service request form.
I do hope you have found this presentation helpful. Thank you.