Following recent guidance from the DfE, the number of 2, 3 and 4-year-olds is now optional within the EY census 2025. Previously, the COLLECT validation required at least one of these fields to have a value greater than 0.
Due to the timing of this change, which occurs after the Census date and the pressure on you to create the Return, we have decided not to release a patch. Instead, we'll be able to issue guidance to help you successfully navigate this year's Return.
Our concern is if providers only have 9 months up to 2-year-olds attending their setting, and due to the lack of ability to record 9 months to 2-year-olds (per the DfE specification), they would correctly fail validation in Synergy’s EY census screen, and the Provider would not be included in the Census file.
The DfE now wants to include these providers, so below are the steps to ensure their inclusion:
Within the Provider record > Census Details, any provider with zeros against the “No of 2yr olds”, “No of 3yr olds” and “No of 4yr olds” will not be included in the Census file:
For a provider to be included in the EY Census export, you will have to populate one of the fields with a number.
In the example below, 1 has been entered into the “No of 2yr olds” field:
This means that once the record is saved and the EY census export is run, the resulting file (which will be a .xml) will need to be opened in an editor of your choice, and (in the example of using No of 2yr olds), the value should be set to 0:
“ <EY2Years>1</EY2Years>”
To
“ <EY2Years>0</EY2Years>”
Once the final version of the XML is uploaded to COLLECT, the Provider record(s) in Synergy will need to be corrected back to the original value of zero.