Parent Pay Guidance Documents

Please note that these are 2025 documents and that dates referred to need to be updated for 2026

A note on partial returns

Many schools subscribe to an external payroll system which can deliver much of the information required for the school workforce census in a COLLECT compatible format. These schools may elect to provide a partial return thereby removing the need to maintain duplicates of contract and other records in SIMS.

If you have an agreement with a provider to support your completion of the return, you may need to use SIMS to complete a partial return to provide information not held in central payroll and known only to the school. The exact details of the arrangement are agreed between the school and their HR / Payroll service provider - schools should ensure that they can comply with requirements and that their provider is able to provide DfE with a complete return on behalf of the school.