Which Collect Reports Should Schools Run As Checking Their (2017) SWF Return?

Which Collect reports should schools run as checking their (2017) SWF return?

At the point of the step, in our Early Warning Letter (<link), when COLLECT Reports mustbe run by the school, (after the latest return has been on COLLECT overnight)… thisdetailed guidegives schools more detail about which COLLECT reports must be checked by schools for SWF…

The COLLECT Reports to be checked by schools(the day after your latest return was uploaded to Collect) are:

For information purposes only there is also a Notes report (that only shows notes added to the return)…

0. Notes ReportThis extra report just shows any notes a school has attached to the return on COLLECT (plus any that their LA have added later). Notes (at return level) are needed about each case of each unresolvable query that remains on the return, the note must list (by query code and then name of person affected) specific reason it is impossible to resolve. Most queries,and all errors, must be resolved (rather than adding note).
Notes must be added only once when reaching that section of the ‘steps’ in the Early Warning Letter (see link above).

More detail on the six Collect reports (listed in the table above) and their use by schools follow (overpage)…

(details are mostly extracts from )(see note at end)

1. School Error reportshould tell you the same list of errors as the Collect “All Errors” Button (thatmust also be checked) giving you all errors and queries (but not any other issues), and is supposedly based on LIVE COLLECT DATAas soon as the latest return has status“…validated” (or better)… this report moreeasily shows schools which staff and maybewhich of their records are affected by particular errors/queries.

An example of the report follows:

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2. Missing Contracts report (not live: NEXT DAY)

This report shows staff members who are included in the return but there is missing contract/service agreement information. (the person has been exported but none of their contracts have). This report does not run against the live data. The data output in the report applies to the previous day, thus, if any changes have been made to the return, these will only be reflected in the report the following day.

An example of the report follows:

With any of these reports the header should be shown even if there is no data to show:
If you cannot see the area circled in red above then the report has not successfully run (or finished running as it may take approx.5 minutes).

! If any staff are shown (even leavers) then there is an issueto be resolved.

Our Missing Contracts(<link) advice sheet explains the likely (typical) causes, which (if the contract exists) can be to do with having not yet loaded acontract end dateon a leaverwho already has a ‘date left school’ or,depending on MIS: (in RM integris MIS) having wrong SWF category or (in SIMS) having ‘role’ end date(in past) on current staff contract or (in CMIS Advanced Learning MIS) having edited data e.g. ending contract, fromwithin the current year’s dataset, which should have been done in an older year’s dataset cascaded forward asCMIS doesn’t cascade back retrospective edits.

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3. Missing …Payment Details report (NEXT DAY)

This report shows staff members who are included in the return but who have missing payment details on their contract (or who have multiple roles in the CMIS Advanced Learning MIS or the Wauton Samuel MIS). This can be caused by a contract having several roles but not having contract level pay details and,because of that, not having payment details on all of the roles. Usually there are also errors occurring too for these pay issues.

4. Teachers with Multiple Contracts report(TREAT AS NEXT DAYDfE contradicted themselves on whether live or not)

This report was new in 2015 (possibly revised in 2016 or 2017). Itallows school to display a list of teachers (who have severalcurrent contracts on census date)where their combined Full Time Equivalent is over 1.2 (i.e. Teacheris loaded as working over 1.2 weeks per working week!). Review,in the MIS,their contracts’ “Hours worked per week” “FTE hours per week” (see 1f in Early Warning Letter for what ‘FTE hours’is).

Perhaps also seen as error TMC1Q (if that error is active). If no teachers have multiple contracts in the return, the report will showjust a header. Names are shown only once (on the top line of that person’s details): a line with no name is for the person named immediately above that line.
Note: the report excludes:Support Staff & Teaching Assistant contracts and any closed contracts (where end date is beforethe census date).

• Contracts in other returns

• Non visible records – these are contracts that were part of an original return that has been matched reconciled into a COLLECT Master record.

}= 1.7 FTE (as same person).

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(Credibility Checks After submission)

Credibility checks compare data in the schools or local authority return against predefined criteria for both in year and ‘year on year’ checks to highlight where data inconsistencies may have arisen. Like queries the information is likely to indicate an issue but can (very rarely) be correct.

The following reports have been developed to aid in delivering improvements in workforce data quality:

5. Teacher Pay Outside Range report (NEXT DAY).

Beware that (after considering the following) you should check those shown on this report as it might indicate that either their base pay, or their base pay and their hours per week, may be incorrect in your MIS, however2 DfE issues causepeople to be on this report even if their data is ok:
A) DfE do not handle part-timers properly inthis report, whichcompares base pay figure to ‘full time’ pay expectation, even if teacheris part time (so needed part time pay in base pay): so part timers mightbe ‘ok’;to check a part-timer, divide their Base Pay figure in report, by that person’s fraction of a week worked(e.g. if working3 day week: base pay divided by 0.6) to get figure to compare to Min-Max range on that line of report.
B) DfE have ‘slightly’ inaccurate Minimum and Maximum figures for some pay ranges (by around £1 or £2 at each end of range). Teachers at either the min or the maxof apay range may be seen in the report with base pay figure that is only a pound or two beyond the DfE Minor Maxfigure shown in report – suchminor differences can be ignored – data ok (DfE likelydid annual uplift on rounded, rather than unrounded, figures).

6. Teacher Data Consistency report (NEXT DAY). This report was new in 2015 (possibly revised in 2016 or 2017).

Thisgivessupplementarydatato aid investigation of specific queries ifany seenas running the ‘Return Credibility’ report(no.6 below).

The data relate to discrepancies in:• National Insurance Number• Teacher Number • Qualified Teacher Status • FTE Ratio

This report checks the consistency of this key teacher data against that provided in the previous year collection.

This report does not run against the live data. The data output in the report applies to the data loaded by the end of the previous day, thus, if any changes have been made to the return, these will only be reflected in the report the following day.

One example of the report:

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7. Return Credibility Check report (Only the day after‘SUBMITTED’)This ‘credibility’ report wasnew in 2015 (possiblyrevised since).

The school return credibility check report checks credibility of the data in a return by comparing data in that return to a predefined set of checks with criteria for both “in year” and “year on year” checks, comparing the latest return (once it has been ‘submitted’overnight?)to the previous year’s final return,to highlight where data inconsistencies have arisen. It is available to all schools, even academies free schools, LAs and DfE.

In the credibility check report each line is a different check; a line thatdoes not breach any criteria for that check, will say: ‘No action required’ in that line of the report and thatline can be ‘ignored’. If no return has been uploaded, the report gives the message ‘No Data Present’.

Beware: this report does not run against live data. Furthermore in 2016, the DfE had this report only show any issues afterthe latest SWF return had reached the “Submitted” Yesterday stage… so in 2017, even if this report shows‘a header and no issues’ on the day after your latest return upload, please can you still re-run this report again on the day AFTER you have pressed the collect “SUBMIT return” button at the appropriate final stage of the steps in the Early Warning Letter. The data output in the report (once shown) applies to the data loaded by the end of the previous day, thus, if any changes have been made to the return, these will only be reflected in the report the following day.

An example of this report showing all check lines(that were carried out by the DfE when the report was introduced)followsoverpage.

Important note about the check line for “Teachers with more than one Additional Payment of the same type”in the ‘Return Credibility Report’:

The period the‘additional payments’ are needed for is “from the day after last census date to this census date”:itis parts of two academic years.

This Credibility report warning line can indicatea real issue or may,in returns from aone MIS, be falsely-triggered: where that MIS is designed to export 2‘partial’additional payment records(one per academic year)for eachAdditional Payment record,in that MIS,if itwaspaid in both years.

One particular MIS – possibly SIMS? – stores ‘additional payments’ as a (record per) cash amount per academic year, and so it is likely to create Swf returnsas follows:with1 additional payment,in the return, having a larger‘pro rata’figure relevant to majority of the previous academic year (just under 10 months from Nov. 2016 census date to end Aug. 2017) plus a secondadditional payment, in the return, with a much smaller‘pro rata’ figure for the part of the current academic year (just over 2 months from Sept. 2017 to this November’s census date);together these two records represent eachadditional payment record in the MIS, if paid in bothacademic years. That MIS is not doing anything wrong by exporting ‘pro-rata pairs’, but this does make it difficult to diagnose an issue regarding whether cash values on additional payment records in the return, on COLLECT, are correct, as they will not match figures in the MIS (and, ifan amount varies year-to-year in the MIS, even sumswon’t quite match).

This MIS is likely to generate returns that will always suffer this particular warning on Collect’s ‘Return Credibility’ report, for everyone who has an Additional Payment that crosses both relevant academic years, even if their Additional Payment data is correct… so once you’ve investigated the figures in COLLECT with the above in mind, if theythen seem correct, then this particular check line warning of this report could then be ignored.

For any MIS: If your Return Credibility report shows this warning line as an issue, you must first check in both of the appropriate two “Additional Payments” modules in COLLECT, sorting each module by “person” to show the cash amounts being exported by the MIS, for each person, for each Additional Payment‘Type’, investigating any cases where there is more than one record, for the same type, for the same person, in Collect.

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This doc. updated 23/10/2017 (from5/11/2015extract of updated).