Early years census: technical specification
Technical specification and validation rules for local authorities and software suppliers preparing for the early years census.
Applies to England
Documents
Details
This is technical information about submitting data for the early years census.
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
Read more about submitting data for the early years census.
Updates to this page
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Added 'Early years census 2026 to 2027 financial year: business and technical specification', 'Early years census 2026 to 2027: validation rules' and 'Early years census 2026 to 2027: annexes'.
Update history
2025-10-08 09:27
Updated ‘Early years census 2026 to 2027: validation rules’. Changes are listed in the version history.
2025-09-09 11:46
Updated the 2 business and technical specification documents. Changes are listed in the version history.
2025-07-11 13:52
Added ‘Early years census 2026 to 2027 financial year: business and technical specification’, ‘Early years census 2026 to 2027: validation rules’ and ‘Early years census 2026 to 2027: annexes’.
2025-06-03 16:14
Updated ‘Early years census 2026: validation rules’. In the ‘Collect Only Validation’ worksheet, columns X (Studio Updated) and Y (SQL updated) have been deleted.
2025-04-17 14:42
Published documents for the 2026 early years census, replacing the 2025 versions. Changes are listed in the version history.
2024-12-13 08:29
Updated ‘Early years census 2025: business and technical specification’. The changes made are noted in the version history.
2024-11-06 17:03
Updated ‘Early years census 2025: business and technical specification’. The changes made are noted in the version history.
2024-09-19 16:11
Updated ‘Early years census 2025: business and technical specification’ and ‘Early years census 2025: validation rules’. The changes made are noted in the version history.
2024-07-25 16:02
Removed ‘Early years census 2024: business and technical specification’. Updated the ‘Early years census 2025: validation rules’. The changes made are noted in the version history.
2024-05-08 16:50
Updated the ‘Early years census 2025: validation rules’. The changes to the document are described in the version history.
2024-02-23 10:53
Added ‘Early years census 2025: validation rules’.
2024-01-31 10:51
Updated the ‘Early years census 2025: business and technical specification’ document to amend the heading numbering.
2024-01-12 11:38
Added the document ‘Early years census 2025: business and technical specification’.
2023-10-10 12:52
Updated the ‘Early years census 2024: business and technical specification’. Changes are listed in the version history.
2023-06-14 10:46
Published documents for the 2024 early years census, replacing the 2023 versions. Changes are listed in the version history.
2022-11-24 10:08
‘Early years census 2023: validation rules’ has been updated. The changes to the document are described in the version history.
2022-11-16 16:12
The ‘Early years census 2023: validation rules’ has been updated. The changes to the document are described in the version history.
2022-09-22 11:09
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.
2022-06-21 17:13
First published.