England school census

The School Census is a statutory data collection for all maintained (state-funded) schools in England. This includes nursery, primary, secondary, middle-deemed primary, middle-deemed secondary, local authority maintained special and non-maintained special schools, academies including free schools, studio schools and university technical colleges and city technology colleges. Service children's education schools also participate on a voluntary basis. Schools that are entirely privately funded are not included. It is a statutory obligation for schools to complete the census and schools must ask parents for information, tell parents and pupils where data are optional, and tell them what it will be used for before submitting it to Local Authorities or Department for Education. There is no obligation for parents or children to provide all of the data.

The census dataset contains approximately eight million records per year and includes variables on the pupil's personal data, including name, home postcode, gender, age, ethnicity, special educational needs, free school meals eligibility, as well as educational history and attainment results. The census also sends sensitive data to the Department for Education, such as absence, exclusions and their reasons, indicators of armed forces or linked to indicators of children in care. The data collected on children from age 2-19, three times a year, creates a "lifetime school record" of characteristics, testing and tracking, to form a single longitudinal record over time. This single central view of a child's personal confidential data and their educational achievement, behaviours and personal characteristics, is core to the National Pupil Database,[1] a linked database controlled by the Department for Education.

The data collected for each individual pupil is listed in the National Pupil Database User Guide.[2]

Data is retained indefinitely[3] and in December 2015, the National Pupil Database contained 19,807,973 individual pupil records on a named basis.[4]

It is "one of the richest education datasets in the world" according to the National Pupil Database (NPD) User Guide.[5]

Controversy surrounds the school census expansion in 2016 to collect nationality data, first reported on in June, 2016, in Schools Week.[6]

  1. ^ "School Census (Unpublished)". Data.gov.uk. 10 February 2016.
  2. ^ para 3.2.2 pages 31-37. "National Pupil Database User Guide v1.3" (PDF).{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  3. ^ "Pupil data: national pupil database numbers". whatdothyeknow.com. February 2016.
  4. ^ "Pupil data: National pupil database numbers - a Freedom of Information request to Department for Education". 29 December 2015.
  5. ^ "National Pupil Database User Guide 2016–17" (PDF).
  6. ^ Scott, Sophie (June 23, 2016). "Schools must collect data on immigrant children from autumn".