Written by Admin | 8 Nov 2024
Summary
The School Workforce Census is a statutory data collection by the Department for Education (DfE) that collates data on all teaching and support staff in regular employment. This includes local authority maintained schools, academies, free schools and pupil referral units. It takes place each Autumn, and schools must complete statutory censuses by law unless there is a valid reason not to. As EPM hold a significant proportion of the data required to complete the census, we will automatically provide this to all customers with the appropriate service specification in a spreadsheet. The DfE guidance on submitting data can be found
here. If you are a central trust, please cascade this information to your academies as appropriate.
Who does this apply to?
This bulletin is relevant to all schools, including academies and trusts who wish to use the EPM report to assist with the submission of their School Workforce Census (SWFC) return:
- Local authorities are responsible for coordinating and approving the submission of census data from all their maintained schools.
- Academies are responsible for approving and submitting their own census data.
- Trusts must ensure that a separate return is made for each academy.
Census day 7 November 2024
Census day for the SWFC this year is 7 November 2024 and the deadline for submission to the DfE is 6 December 2024. EPM will provide a report to support you with completing the census as soon as possible following census day, located under
‘Download Reports > Archived and Other Reports >SWFC’. You will be notified when these reports are available to download. The report is based on information entered by your School Portal users onto the EPM Portal. Therefore, you are strongly advised to complete any blank fields and check the data for accuracy before submitting to the COLLECT system. EPM does not hold all the data required for you to complete the return.
Changes since the school workforce census 2023
The changes made since the 2023 collection are:
- Sex has replaced gender in the data collection. See section 7.1.6 of the DfE School workforce census guide. ‘Sex’ is the sex recognised in law, as recorded on a birth certificate or gender recognition certificate. This will be the same value that is reported to the HMRC, as legal sex can affect pension ages or National Insurance contributions. Therefore, EPM will map previous values of ‘Gender’ to the new field of ‘Sex’. Schools and local authorities will not be asked by the DfE to re-obtain sex information from staff.
- Guidance on the information needed for staff with closed contracts has been strengthened, see sections 2.4 and 3.3 of the DfE technical specification.
What support will EPM provide
EPM will automatically provide a spreadsheet report to all customers with an appropriate service specification. The report provided will be in the same format as the DfE template and provided as a data file for you to import into the COLLECT system. This report will be made available on the
‘Download Reports’ section of the EPM Portal.
Please note that we do not hold all the data required on your behalf. Therefore, EPM cannot provide a complete census. Fields we cannot complete will be left intentionally blank and require completing before importing.
Which data will EPM include?
EPM data will cover:
- School workforce member record (except disability, HLTA status)
- Contract or service group record type (except daily rate, destination)
- Role record type
- Role additional payments record type
- Absence record type (for EPM Payroll schools only)
- Qualification record type
- Reason for leaving (this will be listed as ‘other’ unless an alternative reason is recorded on the EPM Portal).
Please note: the new post classifications of 'apprentice teacher' will only be populated where the 'contract additional text code' on the the Portal is populated to indicate an apprentice teacher- code APPR.
EPM data will not cover:
- Post additional payments record type (additional payments are recorded in the role ‘additional payments’ record type, so this data is captured)
- Curriculums group record type
- School record type
- Vacancies record type
- Agency TP support staff record type
- The Newly Qualified Teacher column which is intended to identify Early Career Teachers in the first or second year of their induction. This will be left blank for non-teaching staff and automatically populated with ‘NotNQT’ for all staff on a teaching contract. Schools will need to amend this to the following codes where appropriate: • ‘NQT1’, indicating a teacher in the first year of induction • ‘NQT2’, indicating a teacher in the second year of induction
- The new flag to identify members of the Senior Leadership Team. This will be left blank for all employees as this is not explicitly recorded on our Portal. Schools will need to amend to the following codes where appropriate: • 0 – False, the individual is not a member of the Senior Leadership Team • 1 – True, the individual is a member of the Senior Leadership Team
- The post-classification of 'leadership - non teacher' as this is not explicitly recorded on our Portal. All non-classroom-based support staff will be recorded as ‘other support staff’ and Schools will need to edit this field as appropriate for employees in the category ‘leadership – non teacher’
Other points to note prior to submission
- ‘Destination’ field is completed as NAPPCH (Not Applicable - Change of Contract) unless a resignation has been entered on the EPM Portal. Where a resignation has been entered that does not mirror the options required for the SWFC return, the destination will be recorded as NTKNWN (not known) and will need to be updated before submission.
- ‘Reason for leaving’ field will be completed as ‘other’ unless one of the alternative reasons is recorded on the EPM Portal.
- ‘Qualified Teacher Status’ must be recorded as three categories: QTS, QTLS and EYTS. The report will list all qualified teachers as holding QTS, as this is what is recorded on the EPM Portal. If you have members of teaching staff who hold QTLS or EYTS status instead, please ensure this is updated on the report before submission.
- ‘QTS route’ is only required for staff who have taken up their first teaching post since the previous census or who are working towards QTS, though it can be returned for other staff as well.
- Where schools have changed employer during the data collection period (for example, have moved to an academy trust from a local authority) the data contained in the report will only include information held by the current employer.
- Contracts that have lasted 28 days, are permanent, or have an end date 27 days or more after the contract start date should be included on the return. All contracts that are not still open and in scope on 7 November 2024 should be removed before submission.
- Qualifications data will only be included where this is recorded on the EPM Portal for Subject 2. If there is no qualifications data held for an individual, they will not be listed on that section of the report.
Multi-academy trusts must make a separate return for each academy within the trust. Therefore, we have uploaded a separate report for each school on the EPM Portal.
Further information
Further information can be found in the following DfE document:
Guide for schools including academies within a Multi-Academy Trust. If you have any queries related to the EPM report, please contact
swfc@epm.co.uk.
Key points
• EPM will provide a spreadsheet containing a significant proportion of the data required to complete the SWFC to all customers with an appropriate service specification. • Census day is 7 November 2024, and the deadline for submission to the DfE is 6 December 2024. • You are strongly advised to complete any blank fields and check the data for accuracy before submitting to the COLLECT system. EPM does not hold all the data required to complete the return. • There are specific requirements for submissions made by local authority schools and multi-academy trusts, which our report should help to facilitate.