For recent updates see the end of the blog.
Welcome back to the 2021-22 school year! Arriving back at school in September after a long (for some) restful break it’s too easy to forget we have survived a very difficult academic year, with some sort of normality we hope our schools’ have had a positive return back.
As we approach October it can mean only one thing..the Autumn School census! The Autumn Census will take place on Thursday 7th October 2021. All schools should be on the latest version of SIMS 7.20 and will have applied the Workstation Patch 1.
We have sent out the latest fileset 1903 to all schools and it is suitable for authorising the school census in all cases including schools with pupils in Year 12 and above. We would highly recommend all schools to perform a dry run of the census prior to census day, all being well with your data, it will be just a case of running the census on Thursday 7th October and submitting it to the LA.
The two new data that have been included in this census is the Learner funding and monitoring (FAM) type. This data item is for all schools except nursery with applicable year groups. This census will be the first collection for these data and is expected to continue on following census returns.
The second data item is the Learner funding and monitoring (FAM) code, this is collected alongside FAM type. This indicates the element of category being recorded.
Before submitting your return, please check your return thoroughly, too often schools check the summary report and overlook the detailed reports in the school census, it is always a good idea to get a fresh pair of eyes to validate the data you are submitting. Once uploaded in COLLECT do not forget to submit! It is easily missed especially when you are excited to complete the return after resolving all the errors, wait for it to validate and click on the submit button, few seconds more will save you time and panic when you receive the call from LA two weeks later to say they are still waiting on your return.
Please remember we also provide consultancy for those schools who wish for us to take the task off their hands, for others, best of luck, and remember we are just a phone call away to provide support.
We will continue to update our schools with all the latest DfE guidance and any new fileset release by email, please let us know if you are wish to be added to our email distribution list (SIMS Support Schools only). Our helpdesk will operate as normal from 8 am -5pm for support. We will prioritise any census support queries for next week.
Updates Queries & Errors can be found in this PDF..
