Guidance

Children in need census 2024 to 2025: specification

Specification and validation rules for local authorities and software suppliers preparing for the 2024 to 2025 children in need census.

From:
Department for Education
Published
20 October 2023
Last updated
31 October 2023 — See all updates

Applies to England

Documents

Children in need census 2024 to 2025: business and technical specification

PDF, 276 KB, 33 pages

Children in need census 2024 to 2025: validation rules

ODS, 17.1 KB

This file is in an OpenDocument format

Details

This is technical information about submitting data for the children in need census for the period 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025.

It is for:

  • suppliers of software for local authority management information systems (MIS)
  • users of local authority MIS software

It explains:

  • changes to the previous year’s census collection
  • what data local authorities should supply at child level
  • how to structure the data in XML
  • how to check the data against the validation rules
Published 20 October 2023
Last updated 31 October 2023 + show all updates

  1. Updated 'Children in need census 2024 to 2025: business and technical specification'. The changes are described in the document's version history.

  2. First published.