The school workforce census is a statutory data collection that takes place each autumn. You must complete statutory censuses by law unless there's a good reason not to.
Important dates 2023
Privacy Notices
Local authorities, local-authority-maintained schools and academies should issue privacy notices to all members of staff. Privacy notices inform staff members about the details of the census and their rights under the Data Protection Act.
Academies should submit their return directly to the DfE via COLLECT. All LA maintained schools should upload to COLLECT for approval by the Local Authority, who will then submit to the DfE for authorisation. Please be aware the DfE can request amendments to a return prior to their authorisation.
Please note it is the school's responsibility to provide accurate data and make any amendments to their data in COLLECT, this is to ensure there is an audit trail and transparency of data. We'll only be able to change the status of your data submission to 'approved' once you've cleared all errors in the data in COLLECT. To aid this, the DfE have produced a range of credibility reports in COLLECT to help schools check their data. Last year a significant number of schools uploaded members of staff without contracts and this could have been avoided by running the missing contracts credibility report before submission.
DFE Guidance
If you have any queries on the SWC for 2023 please email workforcedevelopment@essex.gov.uk and we will assist you.