Parental responsibility measures attendance census
How local authorities should collect and submit data for the annual attendance measures census.
Applies to England
Overview
Local authorities must complete the parental responsibility measures attendance census each September or October.
You must submit details of the controls you put in place in the previous academic year to help parents make sure their children attend school, including:
- parenting contracts
- parenting orders
- penalty notices for unauthorised absence
- number of cases you’ve entered into the attendance case management system
From the 2027 collection, we are renaming the data collection to ‘local authority measures to support attendance’ (LAMSA). This is to better reflect its purpose and highlight the key role of local authorities in supporting school attendance.
This new name will be effective from the 2026 to 2027 academic year and will be used for the data collection in September 2027.
You can find further information in the 2027 LAMSA guide for local authorities.
Important dates
Dates for the 2026 census:
- census opens: Wednesday 2 September 2026
- data loading deadline: Friday 2 October 2026
- database closure: Friday 16 October 2026
Submit your data
You’ll need to:
- register and log in with DfE Sign-in
- use COLLECT to submit your data
Please contact your school or local authority approver, if:
- you want to request a DfE Sign-in username or password so you can access COLLECT
- ‘parental responsibility measures attendance’ is not on the list of collections you can see in COLLECT
Get help using DfE Sign-in
If you do not know who your approver is, please use the DfE Sign-in request form.
If you’ve forgotten your password, use DfE Sign-in to reset it. You will need to click ‘Start now’ and then the ‘I’ve forgotten my password’ link.
Note that we’ll only be able to change the status of your data submission to ‘authorised’ once you’ve cleared all errors in the data in COLLECT.
Census documents
The following documents will help you complete the census:
2026 to 2027 census
2025 to 2026 census
Do you need help?
Submitting data
Please use the service request form if you have any questions about your data. We aim to answer your question within 5 working days.
Feedback
Please use the feedback form if you have any comments about our data collection service, including COLLECT and the helpdesk service.