The school workforce census is a statutory data collection which takes place each autumn.
School Workforce Census Day is Thursday 6 November 2025. All Local Authority schools need to upload your files to COLLECT by Friday 21 November 2025. This will enable us to contact you if there are any queries or errors on your return.
You must complete statutory censuses by law unless there's a good reason not to.
You must submit your school workforce return to us or DfE using COLLECT.
Guidance
Academies should submit their return directly to the DfE via COLLECT.
All maintained schools should upload to COLLECT for approval by Essex County Council who will then submit returns to DfE for authorisation.
DfE can request amendments to a return before authorisation.
It’s the responsibility of schools to provide accurate data and make any amendments to their data in COLLECT. This is to make sure there’s an audit trail and data transparency.
We'll only change the status of data submissions to 'approved' once all errors in the data have been cleared in COLLECT.
DfE data and census support
To aid this, DfE has produced a range of credibility reports in COLLECT to help schools check data.
Previously a significant number of schools uploaded members of staff without contracts. However, this could have been avoided by running the missing contract credibility report before submission.
To find out how to collect and submit data for the school workforce census use DfE’s School workforce census: guide to submitting data.
To find out how to submit data using COLLECT use DfE’s COLLECT Guides for schools and local authorities.
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.
For more information about privacy notices use DfE’s Data Protection: privacy notice model documents guidance.
Contact us
For more information or if you have any questions about the school workforce census email workforcedevelopment@essex.gov.uk