Guidance

School census 2025 to 2026: technical information

Technical specification and validation rules for submitting 2025 to 2026 school census data.

• From: Department for Education
• Published: 3 April 2025
• Last updated: 18 March 2026
  Show all updates

  1. 18 March 2026

     Updated the ‘School census 2025 to 2026: business and technical specification’ to reflect that the disadvantaged entitlement for 2‑year‑olds is now called the early learning entitlement for 2‑year‑olds.

  2. 14 January 2026

     Updated 'School census 2025 to 2026: business and technical specification'. Details of the changes are described in Annex H.

  3. 13 January 2026

     Updated 'School census 2025 to 2026: validation rules'. The changes are described in the change log tab.

  4. 3 December 2025

     Updated 'School census 2025 to 2026: business and technical specification'. Details of the changes are described in Annex H.

  5. 4 November 2025

     Replaced 'School census 2025 to 2026: validation rules' with the correct file.

  6. 31 October 2025

     Updated the 'School census 2025 to 2026: validation rules'. The changes are described in the introduction tab.

  7. 17 September 2025

     Updated the 'School census 2025 to 2026: validation rules'. The changes are described in the change log tab.

  8. 10 September 2025

     Updated 'School census 2025 to 2026: business and technical specification'. Details of the changes are described in Annex H.

  9. 9 May 2025

     Added 'School census 2025 to 2026: validation rules'.

  10. 16 April 2025

      Updated 'School census 2025 to 2026: business and technical specification' and 'School census 2025 to 2026: annexes'. Details of the changes are described in Annex H of the business and technical specification.

  11. 3 April 2025

      First published.

Applies to England

Documents

School census 2025 to 2026: business and technical specification

PDF, 2.36 MB, 98 pages

School census 2025 to 2026: annexes

MS Excel Spreadsheet, 117 KB

School census 2025 to 2026: validation rules

MS Excel Spreadsheet, 152 KB

Details

This is technical information about submitting data for the school census for 2025 to 2026.

It is for those who:

• supply software for school management information systems (MIS)
• use school MIS software

The specification shows:

• changes to the previous year’s census collection
• data schools should supply at school level and pupil level
• how to structure the data in XML
• how to check the data against the validation rules

You should also read the common basic data set. This defines common data items that schools use in MIS software and we use in our data collections.