Guidance

Early years census: technical specification

Technical specification and validation rules for local authorities and software suppliers preparing for the early years census 2024.

From:
Department for Education
Published
21 June 2022
Last updated
1410 JuneOctober 2023 — See all updates

Applies to England

Documents

Early years census 2024: business and technical specification

PDF, 782449 KB, 4847 pages

Early years census 2024: validation rules

ODS, 28.2 KB

This file is in an OpenDocument format

Early years census 2024: validation rules

MS Excel Spreadsheet, 171 KB

Details

This is technical information about submitting data for the early years census 2024.

It is for:

  • suppliers of software for local authority management information systems (MIS)
  • users of local authority MIS software

It explains:

  • changes to the previous year’s census collection
  • what data local authorities should supply at establishment level and child level
  • how to structure the data in XML or CSV format
  • how to check the data against the validation rules

The validation rules are available in Excel and OpenDocument formats.

Read more about submitting data for the early years census.

Published 21 June 2022
Last updated 1410 JuneOctober 2023 + show all updates

  1. Updated the 'Early years census 2024: business and technical specification'. Changes are listed in the version history.

  2. Published documents for the 2024 early years census, replacing the 2023 versions. Changes are listed in the version history.

  3. 'Early years census 2023: validation rules' has been updated. The changes to the document are described in the version history.

  4. The 'Early years census 2023: validation rules' has been updated. The changes to the document are described in the version history.

  5. The 'Early years census 2023: validation rules' has been uploaded to the page. The changes in what is required are described in the version history.

  6. First published.