Use this guide to resolve School Census Error 2531
Error 2531:
- Autumn: Where <Sessions> are present, total of (‘/’, ‘\’, ‘L’, ‘B’, ‘J’, ‘P’, ‘V’, ‘W’, ‘C’, ‘E’, ‘G’, ‘H’, ‘I’, ‘M’, ‘N’, ‘O’, ‘R’, ‘S’, ‘T’ and ‘U’ must be equal to <SessionsPossible>
- Spring and summer: Where <Sessions> are present, total of (‘/’, ‘\’, ‘L’, ‘B’, ‘K’ ‘J1’, ‘P’, ‘V’, ‘W’, ‘C’, ‘C1’, ‘C2’, ‘E’, ‘G’, ‘
H’, ‘I’, ‘M’, ‘N’, ‘O’, ‘R’, ‘S’, ‘T’ and ‘U’ must be equal to <SessionsPossible>
Explanation:
- If you do have any custom Attendance Codes recorded against Students then they MUST have a DfE Export Mark and the correct Meaning. For example if you have used the K mark and this equals Present then the Meaning would be Present and the Export Mark would need to mean Present. See How to Create & Manage Attendance Codes and see Example Custom Code below.
- Go to Reports>Attendance>Attendance Certificate and select the Students identified , then choose the start and end dates as defined in (Modules>Census>School>Select Return>’Attendance includes’ dates) then click Preview.
- Check all the Attendance Codes in the Attendance Certificate Report are from the list of DfE Valid Codes below. You can also use this report to check for any Missing marks (?)
- Then once you have identified any incorrect or missing attendance marks go to Modules>Attendance>Manage Attendance>AM/PM>Search by Code and check for any ? marks, do not search for Meaning = Missing in Manage Attendance as ? does not show as missing, then complete/amend the attendance for the Students as required. See How to Manage Attendance
DfE Valid Attendance Codes
For information on Attendance Code Changes for 2024-2025 see here.

For further guidance on Bromcom Census see here
THE EXAMPLES AND SCREENSHOTS IN THIS GUIDE ARE FOR ILLUSTRATION PURPOSES ONLY
Go to Reports>Attendance>Attendance Certificate

You can use this report to review Attendance Codes and search for Missing (?) marks
- On Report for move to Student and then click the Find button to choose the Student(s) this will open the Student Selector list for all Students that are currently on roll.
- Then for the Day Start and Day End refer to the Attendance Collection periods (from Modules>Census>School>Select Return) for the Census you are returning and then click Preview
- In the example below we are looking for Attendance dates for the Autumn 2023 collection


In this example we can see the missing marks ? in the table and the date range applied below the table

IMPORTANT in order for the resolved error/query to be removed from the list of errors/queries you would need to generate a new Census return and remember to use save & validate for the errors/queries to update/clear.