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Check Performance Data - Check Performance Data — Functional Overview

Audience: non-technical stakeholders, delivery managers and service owners. Plain-language description of what the service does today (16 July 2026). No technical knowledge needed.

What the service is

Check Performance Data lets schools and colleges check the pupil information the Department for Education holds about them before it is used to calculate published performance measures. If something is wrong — a pupil is missing, shouldn't be counted, or appears twice — the school can ask for it to be corrected, with supporting evidence, all online. If everything looks right, they can confirm that instead.

Behind the scenes, every request a school submits is automatically triaged against a set of rules the Department controls, so straightforward cases can be pre-sorted and caseworkers can focus their attention where human judgement is genuinely needed. Requests are then turned into tickets in the Department's case-management system (Zendesk) for caseworkers to process.

Why it matters

Checking exercises previously relied on slower, more manual channels. This service gives schools a single, secure, self-service place to review their data and raise corrections during a fixed checking window, and gives the Department a consistent, auditable pipeline for handling those requests — with automatic triage reducing manual effort and a live dashboard showing the health of the whole process.

Who uses it

  • School and college staff — sign in with their existing DfE Sign-In account. They only ever see their own school's data.
  • DfE administrators — manage checking windows, the triage rules, website content and the processing pipeline through a separate admin area. What each staff member can see is controlled by their role.
  • DfE caseworkers — receive the resulting tickets in Zendesk (outside this service).

What school users can do

  • Sign in securely and see the checking exercises ("windows") currently open for their school.
  • Review their pupil lists — who is included and who isn't — with search, and download them as spreadsheets.
  • Request an amendment for a pupil: add a missing pupil, remove a pupil (choosing from reasons such as permanent exclusion, leaving England, or being educated at home), or merge duplicate records. The service asks only the questions relevant to the chosen reason.
  • Upload evidence (PDF documents) to support a request, with an explanation of how it supports the case.
  • Check their answers before submitting, then get an on-screen confirmation with a reference number and a confirmation email.
  • Save a draft and come back later, and see all their requests — drafts and submitted — in one place.
  • Withdraw a submitted request if it's no longer needed (a withdrawal email confirms this).
  • Confirm their data is correct as a simple declaration — and still raise amendments afterwards if something comes up before the deadline.
  • Read guidance and search help content without signing in.

The service follows the GOV.UK design standards used across government, works without JavaScript, and is built to meet accessibility requirements.

What happens to a request

flowchart TD
  a["School submits a request<br/>with supporting evidence"] --> b["Service stores it securely<br/>and emails a confirmation"]
  b --> c["Automatic rules suggest<br/>a triage outcome"]
  c --> d["DfE closes the window and<br/>releases requests for processing"]
  d --> e["Each request becomes a<br/>Zendesk ticket with evidence"]
  e --> f["Caseworkers process it and<br/>the outcome is applied"]

The automatic triage suggests one of three outcomes: approve, reject, or needs human scrutiny. It is deliberately cautious — if any information is missing or uncertain, or anything unexpected happens, the request is always routed to a human rather than decided automatically. Every automated decision records which rule was applied and why, so it can be audited.

What DfE administrators can do

  • Set up checking windows — name, opening and closing dates, which exercise (e.g. Key Stage 4 June) — and attach the pupil data file for schools to check.
  • Edit the triage rules themselves through a built-in editor — no software release needed. Every change is versioned, can be rolled back, and takes effect within minutes.
  • See the whole pipeline live on a dashboard: how many requests are flowing through, how fast, the mix of triage outcomes, and traffic-light health indicators. A read-only version can be shared as a wallboard link that exposes no pupil data.
  • Release submitted requests to caseworkers when a window closes (currently a manual button).
  • Manage website content — guidance pages, help pages and on-page wording — through a built-in page editor with drafts, scheduled publishing and version history, and copy content safely between test and live environments.
  • Manage who can do what — each admin section can be granted per staff role.
  • Investigate problems — view system logs, inspect the processing queues, and retry or discard failed items.

Emails the service sends

Schools receive emails (via GOV.UK Notify) when they: submit a request, confirm their data is correct, or withdraw either. Emails include the reference number and the window deadline.

Current status

Working end to end today

  • Sign-in, pupil data review and download, the full amendment journey for the Key Stage 4 June exercise (add / remove / merge), evidence upload, drafts, submission, withdrawal, confirmation emails.
  • Automatic rules triage of every submitted request, and Zendesk ticket creation when an admin releases a closed window.
  • The admin area: windows, rules editing, content management, pipeline dashboard, queues, logs, role-based access.
  • Usage analytics feeding the Department's data platform (being switched on environment by environment).

Not yet built / known limitations

  • Amendment journeys exist only for Key Stage 4 June so far. Key Stage 2, Post-16 and KS4 Autumn windows can be created but have no question journeys yet.
  • Releasing requests to caseworkers is a manual admin action — windows do not close and hand over automatically yet.
  • The Contact us page is a signpost only: it doesn't record or send anything yet, pending a decision on how enquiries should be routed.
  • Some site furniture is placeholder: the privacy notice, accessibility statement and feedback links don't go anywhere yet, and real guidance content still needs to be written into the content system.
  • Some admin window-management steps (validating and publishing a window's data file) are not finished, and access to the window-management screens is not yet restricted to admins in the way the rest of the admin area is.

Risks & assumptions a manager should know about

  • The service is in Beta. The gaps above are known and visible in places (placeholder links).
  • Human-in-the-loop is preserved: automation only triages; people still make the final call on every request via Zendesk.
  • Pupil data is handled carefully by design: personal pupil details are kept in secure file storage rather than spread through the database; shared dashboards contain aggregate numbers only; and every change to a request is recorded in an unchangeable audit trail.
  • Manual window close is a process dependency: someone must press the release button at the end of each window, or requests won't reach caseworkers.
  • Content and rules changes are self-service, which is powerful but means editorial and rules governance processes matter — the tooling versions everything and supports rollback.

Glossary

Term Meaning
Checking window A fixed period during which schools can review and correct their data for one exercise (e.g. Key Stage 4 June)
Amendment request A school's request to add, remove or merge a pupil record, with evidence
Triage rules / rules engine The configurable automatic checks that suggest approve / reject / needs-human-review for each request
DfE Sign-In The Department's standard secure sign-in used by schools
Zendesk The ticketing system DfE caseworkers use to process requests
GOV.UK Notify The government service used to send the confirmation emails