Many schools using SIMS 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 will need 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.

Please click the appropriate links below to access supporting information.

Parent Pay Guidance Documents

Please note that Parent Pay do not provide guidance for partial returns and the documentation here assumes that all data is to be taken from SIMS

Preparing for the Workforce Census

Producing the Workforce Census

Changes to the collection of disability and ethnicity data

The DfE has made it clear that schools should be recording both ethnicity and disability information for their workforce members within 100 days (3 months) of those workforce members having joined the school.

The ethnicity aspect of this requirement is unlikely to need much implementing for most schools, but the new disability field was only introduced as blank to SIMS by the SIMS Summer Release 2025 and will need to be fully implemented as soon as possible and before the School Workforce Census 2025 is uploaded to the DfE via COLLECT.