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Tel: 01438 844777 Fax: 01438 844936 email: sitss.mis@ lea.herts.sch.uk
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Information for Secondary & Middle (deemed secondary) Schools

	General Information (Covers all census)	Autumn Secondary Briefing	General Download (Covers all Census)
Go to: Nursery, Primary & Special School Census Page	School Census Secondary & Middle Schools
	First Language Ethnicity	new Known Issues	ESC/PRU Downloads

Overview of School Census – What is it?

The submission of the School Census returns, including a set of named pupil records, is a statutory requirement on schools under section 537A of the Education Act 1996.

Every maintained secondary school, middle deemed secondary, CTC and academy in England must complete three Census returns in the calendar year 2012. There will be one collection each term.

The Census dates will be as follows:

• Third Thursday in January (19 January 2012 )
• Third Thursday in May (17 May 2012)
• First Thursday in October (04 October 2012)

If unusual circumstances impact on census day for example, severe weather conditions or religious observances, schools may find that the numbers of pupils and/or staff who are not at school that day are abnormally high. If any census figures for example, ‘school meals taken’ are affected, then a day and time when the situation can be regarded as normal should be selected.

Post 16 Census - Secondary Video Briefing

Incorrectly filling out the Post 16 Census could be costing your school money. We have a produced a 5 minute video highlighting key issues and how you can make sure your school doesn't fall into this trap.

Please be aware of the DfE guidelines regarding Attendance Codes for Dual Registered Pupils which can be read by clicking on the link below:

Recording Attendance for dual registered pupils

Known Issues

There are a small number of issues with the validation and report routines for School Census for January 2012 that we would like to bring to schools’ attention:

Student addresses with no street name

There has been a change in the way census validation works in the situation where a student’s address has no street name – this quite often affects pupils from rural areas where there is a Dwelling name within a village but there is genuinely no Street name in the postal address.

Previously, in Census validation in school, this situation produced a query 2380Q. However, for January 2012 Census, DfE originally took the view that this should always have been flagged as an error and so in the January census you will find that the validation you run in school will display Error 2380 for the affected pupils.

You will need to check pupils’ addresses and once you are satisfied that these are correct in SIMS, add a note to the additional text area in the Head teacher authorisation window explaining that the 2380 errors refer to addresses that are correct. Some suggested wording you could use in the text area is: Error 2380: these addresses have been checked and have been found to correct.

Failure to load the correct validation fileset

In most cases, the correct fileset will have been imported into your SIMS system when the SIMS upgrade to version 7.142 was run. However, we have had a few reports that this has not happened correctly. You may find that you are unable to validate the return, or that you receive error 1858 unexpectedly during validation. If you are able to run the Create and Validate process, the fileset currently in use is displayed in the top left hand corner of the validation errors panel – this should be displayed as SIMS .net Base Version. If you see an earlier version number displayed there – such as fileset 84, you can use Tools | Setups | Import Fileset to import the required fileset (0090-StatutoryReturns-Spring2012_Fileset.mfs in the SIMS/ManifestFiles folder) – if you need help with this process please call the service desk as usual.

Table 7 of DfE Summary Report (Attendance Information)

A problem with several rows of this table has been found. Code Y should be counted as a session where pupils are not required to attend, but is being counted as a session where pupils are expected to attend . For example, if a school used code Y for a strike day last term, all of their pupils will be shown as having at least 1 absence in row 2 of the table.

The information in the return itself, and in the SIMS Attendance Detail report is correct so please use the Detail report for checking rather than the summary.

Downloads for Hertfordshire Schools

The following documents have been created to help you to prepare for the School Census. The Guide to Data Preparation and Sending shows you how to identify missing or invalid data, and how to correct it. Please start the data preparation now as early identification of potential data problems is vital to ensure your return is submitted on time. You should work through all sections of the guide and check the required data areas, using the checklist on page 3 to record your progress.

Manifest Fileset for SIMS Statutory Returns 12/12/2011 UPDATED
Capita may release a new manifest fileset for the January 2012 School Census. If so you should import this fileset into your SIMS .net as soon as possible by following the steps below:

1. Download the zipped fileset below to a folder of your choice, and unzip the fileset to produce 2 files – a .mfs (manifest ) file and a signature file.

2. In SIMS .net, select Tools | Setups | Import Fileset to display the Import Fileset page.

3. Navigate to the location where you unzipped the downloaded fileset. Highlight the .mfs file, then click the Open button to return to the Import Fileset page.

4. Click the Import Fileset button. When the import process is finished, Import complete is displayed at the bottom left-hand side of the Fileset panel.

5. After installing the fileset, close SIMS.

The Guide to Data Preparation and Sending - Secondary Schools

• Acrobat pdf, 2.2mb/52 pages, 14/12/2011, s1228scprepguide.pdf

Post 16 Information will next be collected in School Census Autumn 2012.

School Census Report File

Available to download and Import is a School_Census report file that contains reports we consider will be useful for schools to identify missing or invalid data in preparation for the Census Return.

• RepDef, 141kb, 12/01/2009, school_census.RptDef

DCSF Guidance Notes

• Acrobat pdf, 782kb/88 pages, 12/12/2011, dfe2012secschoolcensusguidance.pdf

These guidance notes provide more detailed information that will help you prepare for the School Census. Please refer to section 3.1 on page 19 of this document to understand what data is collected when by School Census.

Errors and Resolutions

• Acrobat pdf, 341kb/44 pages, 12/12/2011, sc2012errorsresolutions.pdf

Preparing Class Information in Nova-T

This document explains how to set Standard/External subject codes in Nova-T for school census.

• Acrobat pdf, 108kb/8 pages, 16/12/2008, s692_prep_subject_activity_codes_for_school_census.pdf

Census Exclusion Reports

• Word 2003, 170kb/4 pages, 18/05/2009, exclusion_report_for_census_instructions.doc

• RepDef, 490kb, 18/05/2009, census_exclusion_check.RptDef

Updating QAN Data

This document explains how to update the QAN catalogue in SIMS .net and how to import QANs and Discount Codes for use in Course Manager.

• Acrobat pdf, 141kb/5 pages, 28/08/2009, s1015_updating_qan_data.pdf

School Census Post 16 Data Collection SITSS Courses and Classes Report Updated

This report contains reports that print QAN and course information for students.

• RepDef, 12kb, 28/08/2009, course_reports_2.Rpt.Def

New This report can be used to check end dates for all classes attached to all Y12 and Y13 Courses. This report should be run for Year 12 and Year 13 seperately by entering either 12 or 13 as appropriate when running the report.
When running for Y12 the date field should be changed to 01/09/10 so that only classes for this academic year are displayed.

• RepDef, 12kb, 22/09/2009, courses_classes_y12_y13.RptDef

SITSS - Post 16 Course Number Analysis

• RepDef, 490kb, 20/11/2009, sitss_post_16_course_numbers_analysis.RptDef

How to identify Y13 students retaking post 16 learning aims

SITSS have provided this report to help schools identify Year 13 students retaking some Year 12 classes or in fact retaking the whole of Year 12. As per the Post 16 guidance document it is important to check that students retaking a post 16 learning aim is picked up correctly in the Census. The report is called Y13 Classes and can be run from the Student focus.

• RepDef, 5kb, 22/09/2011, y13_classes.RptDef

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PRU School Census

Pru Census Checking Reports

• RepDef, 161kb, 13/12/2011, pru_census_cla_with_exclusions.RptDef
• RepDef, 160kb, 13/12/2011, pru_census_free_meals_review_date.RptDef
• RepDef, 160kb, 13/12/2011, pru_census_missing_ethnic_lang_inf_all.RptDef
• RepDef, 160kb, 13/12/2011, pru_census_sen_review_needs_prov.RptDef
• RepDef, 160kb, 13/12/2011, pru_census_temporary_upn_report.RptDef
• RepDef, 161kb, 13/12/2011, pru_school_census_all_exclusions.RptDef
• RepDef, 156kb, 13/12/2011, pru_school_census_blank_postcode.RptDef
• RepDef, 5kb, 13/12/2011, pru_school_census_blank_upn_list.RptDef
• RepDef, 9kb, 13/12/2011, pru_staff_census_checking_report.RptDef

PRU Census Documents

• Acrobat pdf, 455kb/55 pages, 15/12/2011, dfe_pru_census_2012_guidance_notes.pdf

• Acrobat pdf, 2.3mb/63 pages, 15/12/2011, pru_census_document_2012.pdf

PRU Errors Resolutions

• Acrobat pdf, 467kb/30 pages, 15/12/2011, pru_errorsresolutions_2012.pdf

Flow Chart

The flow chart diagram shows the steps to take as a quick glance in order to create a successful return.

• Acrobat pdf, 14kb/1 page, 23/04/2007, census_flow_chart.pdf

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