School workforce census

Get help with the school workforce census

Management information system (MIS)

Please contact your software provider for queries regarding your Management Information System (MIS), including producing the xml census file and how to record staff information for the School Workforce Census (SWC).

DfE Sign-in

You will need to ensure you are registered with DfE Sign-in. This system is maintained by the Department for Education (DfE) and therefore the local authority (LA) is unable to assist with this part of the process. DfE Sign-in allows access to the COLLECT portal to submit your census file.

The approver within your school will be able to resolve any access issues (speak to your head teacher who should be able to advise who has the approver role within your school). They will be able to add COLLECT to your list of applications if you don't already have it.

All queries, including those from approvers, should be directed to the DfE Sign-In team through their DfE Sign-in service request form. Local authorities and non-maintained schools should use the data collections service request form only if they have a query about the DfE's data collections. Maintained schools should contact their local authority if they have any questions about data collections.

Help using the COLLECT portal is available on the DfE's COLLECT guides for schools and local authorities web page.

The guidance includes information on:

• accessing COLLECT
• uploading and submitting data
• error queries
• matching and reconciliation for the school workforce census

Data requirement queries

If you have any queries about the data requirements of the SWC itself, please refer to the DfE guidance. A full and comprehensive explanation of every data item is included in the documentation. This is available on the DfE's School workforce census: guide to submitting data web page.

Schools are urged to take a look at the data items to be collected in SWC in advance of the collection to ensure data is entered correctly within their MIS.

Last updated 28 September 2023