School-level annual school census: technical information
Technical specification and validation rules describing the requirements for the school-level annual school census (SLASC).
- From:
- Department for Education
- Published
- 12 October 2023
- Last updated
-
7
13NovemberJanuary2025 — See all updates
Applies to England
Documents
SLASC 2026:2025: independent schools business and technical specification
PDF, 1.08526 MBKB, 4447 pages
SLASC 2026:2025: Annex B –- independent schools validation rules
MS Excel Spreadsheet, 49.650.5 KB
SLASC 2025: Annex B - independent schools validation rules
ODS, 22.2 KB
This file is in an OpenDocument format
Details
This is technical information about submitting data for the school-level annual school census.
It’s for:
- suppliers of software for school management information systems (MIS)
- users of school MIS software
It applies to registered independent schools only.
The specification describes:
- what data schools should supply
- how to structure the data in XML
Software suppliers should use the list of validation rules so that schools can validate the data they submit.
You should also read the common basic data set (CBDS). This defines common data items that schools use in MIS software and that we use in our data collections.
More guidance on submitting data for the school-level annual school census is available.
Updates to this page
Last updated 7
-
Updated the 'independent schools business and technical specifications' and 'annex B - independent schools validation rules' for 2026.
-
24 October 2024 Updated 'independent schools business and technical specification' and 'Annex B - independent schools validation rules' for 2025.
-
19 October 2023 Added 'SLASC 2024: Annex B - independent schools validation rules'.
-
12 October 2023 First published.
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Update history
2025-11-07 09:37
Updated the ‘independent schools business and technical specifications’ and ‘annex B – independent schools validation rules’ for 2026.
2025-01-13 09:55
Updated section 2.2 of ‘SLASC 2025: independent schools business and technical specification’ to correct the survey year in the message header.
2024-10-24 08:00
Updated ‘independent schools business and technical specification’ and ‘Annex B – independent schools validation rules’ for 2025.
2023-10-19 08:23
Added ‘SLASC 2024: Annex B – independent schools validation rules’.
2023-10-12 16:45
First published.