How Loudwater keeps your school census-ready, all year round

Statutory returns should not be a once-a-term scramble. Loudwater is built so that every record you enter through the year is already in the shape the DfE expects on census day.

A data model that mirrors the standard

Pupil, staff and school records in Loudwater map directly to the official Common Basic Data Set. Sex and gender identity are separate fields. Kinship care, looked-after status, breakfast club attendance and SEN provision each have their own first-class columns, validated against the right code sets as you type.

Validation as you go

When something is missing or invalid, such as an incomplete UPN, an unranked SEN need, or an ethnicity without a recorded source, Loudwater flags it on the record itself, not in a giant pre-submission report. By the time you reach census day, your error list is usually empty.

One-click XML export

When the census window opens, the export engine assembles the return from your live data, runs a final validation pass, and produces the XML you upload to COLLECT. No spreadsheets, no manual stitching.

What this means for school office staff

Less overtime in census week. Cleaner data the rest of the year. And a clear, auditable trail of who changed what, because every field on every pupil record is versioned.