Preparing for Autumn School Census 2017 The DFE use the data they receive in Autumn School Census to decide how much Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) is allocated to the LA for pupils aged 4 and above (at 31 August 2017) in national curriculum year groups reception to year 11 at the time of the census. This informs the DSG to be passed onto schools in the following school year. I understand that in the near future, schools will be required to upload details of their On Roll Nursery pupils to the Early Years department monthly to receive funding, but the transition to this system is yet to take place. Therefore please continue as before making sure that all your Nursery pupils are admitted in time to be included in the Autumn Census and be counted for a first instalment of funding Census Dry Run You need to be on SIMS.net version 7.176, the Summer Upgrade to have the Autumn Census available. There will also be a fileset to install. Please look out for information regarding this nearer the census date (5th October 2017) Some SIMS Technical Support Providers will arrange to apply the fileset remotely for their schools and once we know what the recommended version number is for census, I will have a copy at the LA that I can email to you if needed. It can be applied via Tools Setups Import Fileset. Don t forget that you can use a census trial run to identify essential missing pupil data items by seeing what errors are produced. Correcting all your pupil data before the Census day will reduce the likelihood of having to edit anything in History a time-consuming task. All the usual documents for the census will be available on the School Census page of the EGFL at: https://www.egfl.org.uk/finance-and-data/data-collection/school-census There will be no scheduling of access to the Autumn School Census. All schools and LAs will have access to the autumn school census blade from 7.30am on Thursday 5th October 2017. Please submit your census by Friday 6th October!
Changes and New Census Items Extended Early Years Funded Hours From September 2017 the Government is rolling out its 30 Hours Free Childcare for Working Families of 3 & 4 year olds scheme across the country. Broadly, it is for children of working parents or children entitled to payments from the Disability Access Fund. A number of Ealing schools with Nursery classes have registered to provide 30 hours and will need to make sure that they complete the new columns that have been added to the Update Early Years part of census in SIMS to collect the information: Hours at Setting should reflect the number of hours that a pupil spends at your nursery each week Use the Funded Hours column to show how many of the 15 free hours of nursery provision (the hours that all 3 & 4 year olds are entitled to) the pupil is spending at your nursery. Establishment unique reference number (URN) The school s Unique Reference Number (URN) is collected for the first time in the Autumn return. The DFE are going to collect the 6 digit establishment Unique Reference Number in census 2017-18. It should be as it appears on Edubase http://www.education.gov.uk/edubase/home.xhtml ` If it is not already in SIMS it can be entered by following the route Focus School School Details.
SEN Unit indicator/resourced Provision indicator collected every term From Autumn 2017, the SEN Unit or Resourced Provision indicator will be collected in every census. The information about who is in a school s SEN Unit or Resourced Provision is added to the individual s pupil record via Focus Pupil/Student Special Educational Needs. Open the relevant pupil record, and add the details to the section Provisions. DFE Known issues for Autumn Census 2017 Errors 3070 & 3075 - Nationality and country of birth for pupils with code SVK The DFE didn t include the code SVK (Slovakia, Slovak Republic) in the validation files that were provided to software suppliers, so errors 3070 and 3075 may incorrectly trigger in your MIS if pupils with nationality or country of birth recorded as SVK. These errors can be ignored as they will disappear when the return is loaded to COLLECT. Funded hours Error 1852 Error 1852 may trigger incorrectly for pupils with zero funded hours in schools systems. This error can be ignored as it will disappear once the return is loaded to COLLECT. Summary Report Table 2 - Pupils on roll by age and gender The age calculation is incorrect in the validationand therefore pupils are shown on this table in a year below their actual age. There is also an error in the wording displayed for pupils aged 5, the date of birth range should be 01/09/11-31/08/12 and not 01/09/2012 and later.
Summary Report Table 16 - Attendance information for the 2017 summer term (terms 5 and 6) for all pupils aged 4 years as at 31/08/2016 The unauthorised absence codes have been omitted in this table. However, pupils aged 4 are not compulsory school age and as schools cannot unauthorise any absence for these pupils we would not expect any school to be affected by this issue. Summary Report - Table 23 Universal infant school meals The age calculation is incorrect for pupils with NC year X and therefore the incorrect pupils may appear in the table for year X. Please note, however, a UiFSM report which will include pupils in year X, is available for schools and local authorities to run via the report section on COLLECT. This report will allow schools to reconcile their pupil numbers. I don t think any schools in Ealing use curriculum year X. Quick Search SIMS Quick Search can help you to find pupils who are missing Ethnicity and First Language: ~E will reveal a list of pupils that have no Ethnicity, and ~F those who have First Language missing. Type the code into the Quick Search field of the SIMS Home Page, and click the Search button. You can then find the relevant Pupil Details record and add the missing data. There is a whole list of Quick Search functions available that you can find in the Managing Pupil/Students in SIMS handbook, available on the SIMS page of the EGFL: https://www.egfl.org.uk/finance-and-data/data-collection/sims Areas that traditionally cause issues in the Autumn Census Part-time details Make sure that any new pupils coming into the Nursery have suitable dates in the Part Time Details box of their Pupil Details.
Similarly, you should check that all children who have gone up into Reception have an end date for their part-time Attendance that is before the Census date! Pupils that turn up after they have supposedly left, including Year 11-12 Occasionally, a pupil informs the school that they are leaving at the end of the school year and are taken off roll, but turn up for the new year anyway, their plans having changed. To avoid problems with their attendance record the correct procedure is to get them back on roll by searching for their off-roll record and removing the Leaving Date. Pupils who actually leave and then return after a gap attending somewhere else should be re-admitted in the conventional way. Accurate starting dates for Pupilsin Nursery and Reception We have had some instances where it appears that schools are using blanket starting dates for pupils on staggered entry into Nursery or Reception. Now that private nurseries are submitting their Nursery Education Grant claims monthly, it is imperative that recorded started and leaving dates are accurate in order that each establishment receives funding based on the correct attendance periods. Pupil Addresses and ULNs (high schools) Unique Learner Number (ULN) is now a statutory item in census for pupils aged 14 and over on roll on Census Day. At the beginning of the school year this is a reminder to add pupil addresses correctly into SIMS. Details added in the wrong fields can bring up an error in census, and cause a problem when uploading to files to obtain ULNs.
Checking SEN Provision is up to date Over the summer the Analysis Team and Pupil Database Manager at the borough ran some comparison reports on SEN Provision provided by schools in the Summer Census. They found many anomalies compared to the data held by the SEN Department at the LA. They have requested that we make a special effort to get this data checked with the school s SEN Co-Ordinator before each census to make sure the most up-to-date information is returned. Top-Up Funding List I usually provide you with a link to the latest Top-Up Funding list on the EGFL. Unfortunately the latest list is not quite ready at the time of writing. When it is published, details will be in Gatekeeping, so please keep an eye open for this. Post 16 Learning Aims in SIMS.net Learning aims data collected in the Autumn School Census will be used by the Education Funding Agency (EFA) to calculate post 16 funding allocations for schools with sixth forms schools. Qualification Success Rates which were previously calculated using learning aim outcomes and results have been withdrawn. The DFE is developing a new retention measure to replace qualification success rates. Further information can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/16-to-19-education-funding-allocations Making a mistake in the data you return in school Census could prove very expensive in terms of loss of 16 19 funding to the school. If you have any concerns, ways to proceed might be to consult your SIMS Technical Support Provider to see if they can help, or to buy-in some Post 16 Consultancy from an accredited or approved SIMS Support Provider. Use the Capita Booklet Preparing Post 16 Data for the Autumn Census 2017 Return, available on the school Census page of the EGFL to guide you through the preparation for collecting Post 16 Learning Aims. Post 16 reminders: Programme of Study All students should have a Programme of Study which sets out the Planned Hours for the courses they are undertaking, divided into Qualification Hours and Non-Qualification Hours. A student s POS should be presented to the student to be signed once they are enrolled. It forms the school s evidence of what has been agreed by the school and the student, and what the school can claim for in terms of funding. It must include the following: Student Name Address with post code, and length of time they have lived there, Age Residency status in the UK Details of their Learning Programme, including start and end dates for all Learning Aims
The number of Qualification and Non-Qualification hours planned in each year of the study Recording Planned Hours in the census Schools are required to record student s Planned Learning Hours (Planned Qualification Hours in SIMS) and Planned Employability, Enrichment and Pastoral hours (Planned Non-Qualification Hours in SIMS). Planned hours must be timetabled, organised and/or supervised by the institution, and take place in line with the institution s normal working pattern. They are exactly as they say the hours that were planned for the student at the beginning of the year, even if this changes during the year. Planned Qualification Hours should be for courses that lead to one of the awards listed in Section 96 of the Learning and Skills Act 2000. They can include hours spent on Study Leave provided they are included in the Programme of Study and meet the above planned hours criteria e.g. structured revision/practice papers should be reviewed/marked by a member of staff Planned Non-Qualification Hours can be everything else as long as they are planned, relevant, supervised, quality assured, and take place within the school s normal working pattern. They can include such things as Tutorials, work experience, sport, enrichment and volunteering. They can also include courses that lead to a qualification that is not included in Section 9 6 such as the Duke of Edinburgh Award For a student to be funded as full-time, they must have at least 540 Planned Hours. Here are the full-time and part-time bands: Full-time students who are aged 18 or over at 31 st August 2017 and are not high needs students, are funded at Band 4 (so 17.5% below the full-time rate for 16 and 17 year olds). Recording Planned Qualification Hours There are various ways of recording Qualification Hours: At qualification level via Tools Academic Management Course Manager Course Manager Settings, and choose the required qualification level. This will then bring through any courses of that level
At course level via Tools Academic Management Maintain Course, so that the hours are calculated for all post-16 students, groups or individual students when you follow the route Tools Academic Management Course Manager Post-16 Programmes of Study By using the table filters when you follow the route Tools Academic Management Course Manager Post-16 Programmes of Study The best approach is probably a combination of all of the above where :individual courses have their Planned Qualification Hours populated by level from the Course Manager Settings particular courses with different Planned Qualification Hours can be edited in Manage Courses e.g. GCAS1 Critical Thinking might have a much reduced timetable allocation Calculate Hours from Courses routine in Maintain Post-16 Programmes of Study can then be used to update the Planned Qualification Hours column (provided the Select All and Overwrite boxes are ticked)
planned Non-qualification Hours can then be added various filter combinations should enable this to carried out efficiently Once you have sorted out the hours for one year, you will need to return and check the courses for the second academic year that the census is collecting details for. Withdrawal Reason If a student withdraws from a Post-16 Learning Aim during the dates the census covers (01/08/2016 to 05/10/2017) a Withdrawal Reason must be supplied. Acceptable Withdrawal Reasons are: Resits and Retakes Resits A resit occurs when an examination is taken again or coursework resubmitted but the student does not attend lessons. Information on resits is not required or collected as part of the Post-16 Return Retakes Retakes, when a student retakes the same course that has been followed previously, even if it was in another school (you are supposed to find out) are not funded (unless the school can prove exceptional circumstances, or the student is retaking Maths and/or English because of lack of prior attainment). From Summer Upgrade 2017, when the route Tools Academic Management Course Manager Maintain Course is followed, and the Memberships and Results section accessed, the column that refers to Retakes is named Non-Funded. As well as indicating that the course does not attract any funding for the school, a tick in this column against a student s course means the hours for that course will be excluded from the overall calculation of their Qualification Hours, The box should not be ticked for students retaking GCSE English and/or Maths so that the course(s) are funded, and the hours included. If you can prove good educational reasons for a Retake, you can claim funding for it, but you would need to be prepared to defend your reasons at audit. Extract from the EFA Funding guidance for young people 2017 to 2018 - Funding regulations: Where learning programmes are designed to enable students to re-sit or re-take examinations and assessments these are not generally eligible for funding as the activity has already been funded. Where there are exceptional circumstances
outside the control of the student or institution, such as a period of long term sickness, or good educational reasons then the re-take delivery hours for individual students may be included in the funded study programme hours. All such students must only make up a small percentage of the total 16-19 student cohort. Core Aim Core Aim is only needed for pupils who are on vocational EFA funded study programmes. If a pupil is following an academic programme a core aim should not be identified. The Core Aim is the substantive learning aim being undertaken in a student s programme of study. As the autumn census collects learning aims taken in the previous and current academic year this will mean that a core aim should be returned for each year where a vocational EFA funded study programme is being followed. 9 1 GCSEs There are more subjects with new GCSE specifications (with grades 9-1) for students in Year 10 (or Year 12 for those taking GCSE subjects) who will be sitting the examinations in 2019. You will need to use the levels below to differentiate between GCSEs with grades A* to G and GCSEs with grades 9 to 1 when you create them in Course Manager. They are: GCSNS => GCSE 9-1 Short course GCSNF => GCSE 9-1 Full course GCSND => GCSE 9-1 Double course New levels for vocational qualifications BTFD3 => BTEC National Level 3 Foundation Diploma CTECe => CTEC Extended Certificate CTEFD => CTEC Foundation Diploma There are different QANs for these new courses unfortunately both the old and new courses are simply called A level in the QAN catalogue If students are taught in the same class, but are following different courses, there needs to be appropriate courses set up for each study route. This may mean setting up courses manually. For example if English in Year 11 is timetabled with a single subject En. The GCSE English Language award can be linked to this course automatically when created by Nova-T6, but a new course will need to be created manually for GCSE English Literature. Update Course Membership has been modified so that Planned End Dates for memberships of year 10/11 and 12/13 students are kept in line with a Two Year Duration setting for a course. This will mean that Protect no longer needs to be ticked in Maintain Course to stop Update Course Membership from reversing manual changes to Planned End Date, and Update Course Membership will be able to automatically modify the Planned End Date for the two year courses as long as Protect has not been ticked Prior Attainment in English and Maths GCSE (or equivalent) 2017: This is updated via Tools Statutory Return Tools Update Prior Attainment and applies to Post-16 students with learning aims between 01/08/2016 and 05/10/2017 (inclusive). Sixth form students will not be funded for any of their courses unless they have already achieved the required standard of English and Maths (9 to 4 or A* to C) or if
they are studying English and/or Maths for an examination on an approved list provided by the EFSA. More information: The DFE documents Funding Guidance for Young People 2017 to 2018 Funding Rates and Formula and Funding guidance for young people 2017 to 2018 - Funding regulations are available on the School Census page of the EGFL Interactive post-16 school census tool The DFE have produced an interactive Post 16 tool to help schools understand how their data is used to calculate their post-16 funding, as well as helping them understand common errors and how they impact on the funding calculated by the EFA. It is expected to be of particular interest to business managers and staff responsible for preparing and submitting the school census. The tool describes each element of the funding formula and which parts of census data the department uses for each element. Each element is illustrated with example data to highlight the impact of errors in the 16-19 funding formula. The guidance is in an Excel workbook, and can be downloaded here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/interactive-post-16-school-census-tool Please make sure that macros are enabled so that the workbook functions properly. If you have any questions about the tool, please contact the EFA using their online form available here: https://form.education.gov.uk/fillform.php?self=1&form_id=hr41ua2f8dh&type=for m&showmsg=1&form_name=knowledge+centre+enquiry+form&noregister=false&r et=%2fmodule%2fservices&nologinprompt=1 Data Collection Dates 5th October 2017 Autumn School Census 2nd November 2017 School Workforce Census 18th January 2018 Spring School Census 17th May 2018 Summer School Census and May Background Report