School workforce census: guide to submitting data
How local authorities, local-authority-maintained schools, and academies should collect and submit data for the school workforce census.
Applies to England
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.
The census collects data on all teaching and support staff in regular employment, including those working for:
- local authorities on central contracts
- local-authority-maintained schools
- academies
-
free schools, including:
- studio schools
- university technical colleges
- pupil referral units (local authority establishments that provide education for children who cannot attend a mainstream school)
Local authorities are responsible for:
- co-ordinating and approving the submission of census data from all their maintained schools
- submitting data for centrally employed school staff
Academies are responsible for submitting and approving their own census data.
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.
You can find earlier versions of this page on the UK Government Web Archive.
Important dates
Dates for the 2025 census:
- census day is 6 November 2025
- deadline for submitting your data is 5 December 2025
Submit your data
You’ll need to:
- register and log in with DfE Sign-in
- use COLLECT to submit your data
Contact your school or local authority approver, if:
- you want to request a DfE Sign-in username or password so you can access COLLECT
- ‘school workforce census’ 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, 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.
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.
School workforce census documents
These documents will help you complete the census:
- COLLECT guides for schools and local authorities
- School workforce census: technical information
- School workforce census: summary specification
- School workforce census: guides
If you wish to request XSLT files for the validation rules and school summary report, contact the data collection helpdesk via the service request form.
Help submitting data
Use the service request form if you have any questions about your data. We aim to answer your question within 5 working days.
Use the feedback form if you have any comments about our data collection service, including COLLECT and the helpdesk service.