The Alternative Provision Census is a statutory annual collection of individual pupil data from English local authorities and covers all pupils who are either:
attending a school not maintained by a Local Authority for whom the authority is paying full tuition fees; or
are educated under arrangements made and funded by the authority, but not in a school or a pupil referral unit.
The Alternative Provision Census collects information about individual pupils, including the type of provision they receive, free school meal eligibility, ethnicity and special educational needs.
The Alternative Provision Census began in 2008 and is collected annually each year in January. Prior to the introduction of the pupil level Alternative Provision Census, aggregated data was collected from Local Authorities via the Form 8b data collection.
The Alternative Provision census contains pupil level data.