The Arts Council hub return

Music services in England that are, or belong to, a Hub Lead Organisation complete the Arts Council's Music Hubs Annual Survey once a year — the hub return. It asks about pupils taught, schools worked with, ensembles run, instruments held, workforce, board and finance, for an academic year running 1 September to 31 August.

Xperios does not complete the return for you. It answers the counting questions — how many pupils, in which Key Stages, in which schools, in what kind of lesson, with what in stock — and a family of Hub Return queries puts those figures in front of you with the definition each one used. Everything else, including all of the workforce, board and finance sections, comes from outside Xperios. What Xperios cannot answer sets out exactly where the line falls, so you are not hunting for a query that does not exist.

Where to find them: Queries, in the Hub Return category

They are Master queries: every customer has them, they are the same for everybody, and they cannot be edited on your own database. If one needs another column or a different cut, ask — see asking for a query you cannot see.

Useful even if you make no Arts Council return

Only hubs in England make this return, but the question underneath the readiness half — do we actually know who we teach? — is a data quality question for anybody. If you are in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland, or you make no statutory return at all, the tile and the two readiness queries still tell you something worth knowing. The nine queries named after template items are the Arts Council part.

During the year: what is missing while you can still collect it

The readiness half is the part most people can act on today, and it is worth running long before the return opens. Characteristics cannot be collected retrospectively from families who have already left.

The Statistic Fields Not Known tile

Where to find it: the Tuition dashboard

STATISTIC FIELDS NOT KNOWN shows, of the pupils you have taught this academic year, how many are not known in the worst-recorded of the four fields a statistical return asks for and Xperios can leave blank — no pupil record, no sex, no ethnicity, no Key Stage — with each of the four listed underneath it.

So the headline number is not a total of the four. It is the single worst of them, which is the figure that would embarrass a return, and the breakdown underneath says which field it was.

It is on the shared Tuition dashboard, so it is there for every customer whether or not they make a return. If it is not on a dashboard you look at, you can add it to one of your own.

Hub Return - Readiness

One row per field — Pupil record, Sex, Ethnicity, Key Stage, SEND, Pupil Premium, both, and Free School Meals — each with a sentence in plain words saying what the return would show if it were filled in from Xperios today. Run it for This Year, during the year. That is the whole point of it.

Three things to understand before you read the numbers.

It counts only the pupils the return would count. Every row names that group in words. This matters more than it sounds: a figure taken across every pupil ever recorded looks far better than the truth, because these details were well recorded on pupils from years ago and are barely recorded on the pupils being taught now. It is the same group of pupils as Hub Return C1, and the two agree.

Sex, Ethnicity and Key Stage show how many are recorded, the percentage, and how many are not known. Those three can genuinely be blank in Xperios, so "not known" there is a real not known.

SEND, Pupil Premium and Free School Meals show a count of "yes" only, with no percentage, and that is deliberate. Xperios holds each of them as yes or no with nothing in between, so a pupil nobody has ever been asked about looks exactly like a pupil who is not eligible. A percentage would be false comfort. If the SEND count looks improbably low, the likely reading is that nobody asked, not that nobody qualifies — and the query cannot tell you which.

The return asks for Pupil Premium, not free school meals

They are not interchangeable, and free school meals does not appear in the template at all. Free School Meals is on the readiness list because Xperios holds it and services often fill it in instead, so you can see at a glance whether you have been recording the one the return does not ask for.

Rows To Show cuts the list to Only Fields That Can Be Not Known — the four on the tile — which is the version to use when you are chasing gaps rather than reviewing everything.

One wrinkle worth knowing: if your own ethnicity list contains an entry that itself means not known or prefer not to say, a pupil set to it counts as recorded. Xperios cannot tell which of your entries mean "we asked and they declined" and which mean a real answer, so it treats a filled-in field as filled in.

Hub Return - Readiness Pupil List

The pupils behind one readiness figure, one row per pupil, so the work of filling the gaps can be handed out.

Pupils To List picks the gap: No Ethnicity (the default), No Sex, No Key Stage, No Pupil Record (On A Register Only), Any Of Those Missing, or Everyone In The Return. A Missing column says in words what each pupil lacks.

Teacher and Venue are what make it usable. Filter to one teacher, send them their own list, and the chasing is a short job for several people rather than a long one for you. With no teacher or venue chosen, the number of rows equals the Not Known figure on the matching readiness row, because both count exactly the pupils the return would count.

Teachers are worked out from who has a diary row on the pupil's plan, because the teacher recorded on the place itself is often empty.

SEND, Pupil Premium and Free School Meals cannot be listed as missing, for the same reason they show no percentage: a blank and a no look the same.

This is a list of named children

It is the one query of the family that returns pupil names. Treat an export of it like any other list of children — and see working with results for what happens to a file once it leaves Xperios.

Collecting the fields in the first place

A readiness figure of zero recorded usually means the question is not being asked, and that is a settings job rather than a query one.

• Use Ethnic Groups turns the ethnicity question on. The Ethnic Group list then appears under Settings, and the question appears on the pupil and on enrolment.
• Use Pupil Premium turns on the Pupil Premium question — the measure the return actually uses.
• Use SEN and Use FSM do the same for SEND and free school meals.

All four are in Settings > Organisation > System Configuration; the field reference lists them with everything else on that screen.

Then build the list itself at Settings > CRM > Ethnic Group. Two things there are worth the effort:

• the central code on each entry maps your wording onto the code a statutory return expects, so you can word the question the way your families would recognise it and still report in the Arts Council's terms;
• an entry can be marked self-identifying, which lets somebody describe themselves in their own words — and gives you somewhere honest to put prefer not to say instead of leaving the field blank.

What all of these queries ask you

The filters are deliberately the same across the family, so learning them once does for all of them. Parameters covers how parameters work in general.

Academic Year. Leave it blank for the current year, or pick This Year, Last Year, or a named year.

Census Date, on six of them. 31 March In The Year is the default, because 31 March is the date the Arts Council uses. Choosing A Date I Choose reveals a second box, Chosen Census Date.

Measure, on five. Anyone Taught In The Year is the default and is what the return asks for: a pupil counts when a lesson of the year is actually in the diary for their place, because holding a place is not being taught. On The Census Date Only instead counts the places running on that one day, which is the figure the dashboard tiles show.

Billing, on five: Direct and Indirect, Direct Only or Indirect Only. This goes by the category of the service type, so one-to-one tuition that a school pays for still reads as Direct.

Rows arrive unsorted. Click a column heading to sort. The queries with a natural order return a Sort Order column to sort on. The grid shows ten rows a page until you change the page size.

A pupil a teacher added by name still counts

A teacher can add a pupil to a lesson in the Portal with a name, a sex and a school year and nothing else, so that pupil has no pupil record at all. Every pupil count here includes them, once per name at a venue, and the readiness queries call them out as on a register with no pupil record. They are counted, and they are also the first group to go and connect to a real pupil record, because everything else about them is unknown by definition.

At return time: which query answers which item

Template item	Query
A1 — schools engaged	Hub Return A1 - Schools Taught In
A7 — the CIL tab	Hub Return A7 - Classroom Instrumental Learning
C1 — pupils by Key Stage	Hub Return C1 - Pupils by Key Stage
C2, C3, C4 — lesson type	Hub Return C2 to C4 - Lesson Type
C5 and C7 — groups, and pupils in them	Hub Return C5 and C7 - Groups and Participation
C10a and C10b — weekend and holiday provision	Hub Return C10 - Weekend and Holiday Provision
D2 — instruments and equipment in stock	Hub Return D2 - Instruments and Equipment in Stock

Check the template version before you type a figure into a box

The item letters above are the same in the 2025-26 and the 2026-27 templates, so they will not have moved under you. What has changed is how much the 2026-27 return asks about pupil characteristics: C1 to C4, C7, C8 and D5 are reduced to numbers of pupils by Key Stage, with the sex, ethnicity and SEND or Pupil Premium breakdowns taken out. The Arts Council recommends services keep collecting that detail anyway while the DfE reviews pupil-level collection, so treat the breakdowns in these queries as your own management information rather than as something the next return requires.

The queries one by one

Each query carries its own full description, shown when you open it. That description is the definitive statement of what it counts; what follows is what to watch for.

Hub Return A1 - Schools Taught In

One row per school you delivered in during the year, to pre-fill the Yes rows of Section A.

A school appears here when at least one session of the year is filed against it — that is, when the school was the venue. While the year is still running only sessions up to and including today count, because the diary is laid to the end of the year; a school whose first session is still to come is not listed yet. A finished year is counted whole.

A school listed here is very likely a Yes, because the Arts Council's guidance counts lessons, classroom instrumental teaching and group activity delivered or supported by the hub as engagement. It is still yours to confirm, for two reasons pulling in opposite directions:

• the return asks about dealings with the school's staff, and a school whose hall you only hired in order to teach pupils from elsewhere appears here all the same;
• a school missing from this list is not a No. A school can be a Yes with no session at all — curriculum support, CPD, help with a School Music Development Plan, an instrument loan — and Xperios cannot see any of that.

A school whose pupils you teach only at a music centre is not listed, and that is right: the Arts Council is explicit that engaging a school's pupils rather than its staff does not count as engaging the school.

IdentifierShape is the column to work from. The return is keyed on LAESTAB — three digits of local authority then four of establishment — and Xperios holds a DfE number that is not always one. The column says which it is: Laestab, Establishment number only (the local authority prefix still has to be added), Welsh format, Other format or Missing. The return cannot be uploaded until the rows that matter are clean, so Rows To Show > Only Schools Without A Laestab is your work list. The numbers themselves are edited on the school record.

The seven No, because… reasons, A4 development plan support and A6 Lead School have no field in Xperios and are yours to answer.

Hub Return A7 - Classroom Instrumental Learning

One row per school per year group, with the pupils in that year group who received tuition and the number of terms — the exact shape of the CIL tab.

Classroom Instrumental Learning, which absorbs what used to be called WCET, is class-time group instrumental teaching where every child in the class takes part. Whole-class curriculum work and whole-class singing are not CIL.

Xperios has no flag saying which of your activities are CIL

Nothing in Xperios records this is CIL. The Service Type and Activity Group filters are how you restrict the query to your own CIL provision, and that is a choice to make once and then keep making the same way each year. With no filter at all the figure covers every indirect class, which is wider than CIL.

It is built from the number of pupils entered on the plan, so a customer who has never filled that number in gets no rows — and that is the honest answer rather than a fault. Pupils To Count can switch from Numbers Entered On The Plan to Higher Of The Number And Named Pupils, which picks up classes where the pupils are named individually instead.

Hub Return C1 - Pupils by Key Stage

The headline figure of Section C: pupils receiving regular singing or instrumental lessons, each counted once, by Key Stage.

Key Stage is worked out on the census date from the date of birth, because a year group is a point in time rather than a property. Where the date of birth gives no school year, the year group written on the place is used instead.

Break Down By offers Sex (the default), Ethnicity, SEND And Pupil Premium, Fee Remission Or Subsidy, Year Group, Pupil Record Or Register Only, or (No Breakdown). A pupil has one date of birth, one sex and one ethnicity, so the total is the same whichever you choose — which is also how you check a breakdown is complete.

SEND And Pupil Premium shows the flags as Xperios holds them today, and its last band says so rather than claiming a negative. The template asks for an explicit unknown row, and that cannot be filled honestly until those flags can hold "not known".

This is the same population as Hub Return - Readiness, so the two agree.

Hub Return C2 to C4 - Lesson Type

Three rows: taught individually, in a small group of 2 to 10, and in a large group of more than 10. In the current template each is a single number with no pupil characteristics.

The teaching group is the activity plan year, and its size is the higher of its named places and the number entered on the plan — the same rule the KPI queries use — so a service that names every pupil and a service that enters a class number are both counted, and neither is counted twice.

Pupils is the figure to return. DistinctNamedPupils sits beside it to show how much of that figure is a class number that cannot tell one child from another; the gap between the two is the useful part.

These will not add up to C1, and are not meant to

C1 counts each named pupil once across the whole year. C2 to C4 size each teaching group on the census date and include class numbers, and a pupil may legitimately appear in more than one lesson type. The 2026-27 guidance says outright that C2 to C4 are not expected to sum to C1. Somebody will compare them, so it is worth knowing why they differ before they ask.

Hub Return C5 and C7 - Groups and Participation

C5 counts the ensembles, choirs and other groups that ran; C7 counts the pupils who took part, each once.

A group counts when a membership overlaps the academic year and a session of the year is in the diary for it. That session test is the default for a reason: a membership that was never given a finish date overlaps every year for ever, and on one service 185 groups had such a membership while only 39 had a session. A GroupsThatRan column comes back on every row so the gap is visible.

Groups To Count can widen it to Every Current Group, Diarised Or Not — which is how you find groups that really do run but outside the diary — or to Every Group With Members, Archived Included, which shows how much is left hanging on old groups.

Two things the query reads off a convention rather than a recorded fact, and which you therefore have to check:

• School partnership or area based is decided by where the group sits: whether its centre is a school contact, or it has a plan held at a school.
• Type (Genre) is the nearest thing Xperios holds to the template's list of instrumental, upper voices, mixed voices, mixed ensemble and other. Some services fill Genre in and some leave it empty, so mapping your genres to the template's types is a one-off job for you.

C6 — whether a group used adapted instruments or made SEND adjustments — is not recorded anywhere and cannot be answered from Xperios.

Hub Return C10 - Weekend and Holiday Provision

The template asks C10a and C10b as plain Yes or No questions: did you offer provision at the weekend, and in the school holidays. No figure goes into the return. This query is the evidence for each answer, and shows how much there was.

Three rows come back: weekend, school holiday, and term-time weekday. Sessions counts the session however many pupils were in it, Attendances the pupil places filled, and Pupils each pupil once. A session that is both a weekend and a holiday is reported as weekend. Delivery narrows it to Lessons Only or Group Sessions Only.

Check your term dates before you trust a large holiday figure

School holiday means a weekday outside every term of the year, inside a term break, or on a bank holiday — all of which comes from your academic year terms. A customer who has not set its terms up will see every weekday counted as a holiday.

As with A1, only sessions up to and including today count while the year is running; a finished year is counted whole.

Hub Return D2 - Instruments and Equipment in Stock

The instruments, equipment and technology you had available at the start of the academic year, because that is what the template asks for. Stock As At therefore defaults to First Day Of The Academic Year, not today.

Stock means a resource record that is not archived, was not disposed of by that date, and was not bought after it. A record with no purchase date is taken as held, because that is how older stock was loaded.

Items counts records and Units adds up quantities, which differ wherever you keep a box of identical things as one record. OnLoan shows how much of the stock was out on the date. Everything here is a known number from a stock record; the template also allows an estimate for anything you hold outside Xperios, and that is yours to add by hand.

Why two figures disagree

Most queries that look like they should match but do not come down to one of these:

• C1 against C2 to C4 — see above. Each pupil once across the year, against each teaching group sized on one day.
• Taught in the year against on the census date — the Measure filter. Anyone Taught In The Year requires a lesson in the diary; On The Census Date Only counts places running that day. The second is the bigger number, and it is the one the dashboard tiles show.
• A readiness figure against the whole pupil list — readiness counts only the pupils the return counts. The full list flatters you, because the detail sits on pupils you taught years ago.
• A figure that grows as the year goes on — A1 and C10 count sessions up to today, so they keep rising until the year ends.

What Xperios cannot answer

So that you are not looking for a query that is not there:

• Section A — the seven No, because… reasons for schools not engaged, curriculum support, CPD participation, School Music Development Plan support and Lead School. No field holds any of them.
• Section B — workforce and board, including every diversity question. Not in Xperios.
• C6 — groups using adapted instruments or SEND adjustments. Not recorded.
• C8 — pupils in choirs. No query yet.
• C9 standards achieved — no query yet. It needs each service's own assessment levels mapped onto the Arts Council's four bands, and that mapping carries the meaning, so it is not something to guess.
• D1 and D3 to D8 — CPD attendance, the loan service judgement questions, and the loan counts. No queries yet.
• Section E — finance. The core revenue grant, local authority income, trusts, donations and sponsorship never pass through Xperios at all, and Xperios is not a ledger, so expenditure is not here either.
• Section F — narrative questions.
• A hub partner's own delivery, where it is not recorded in Xperios. The Arts Council's definition of supported means that delivery is still yours to report; it just arrives as a figure the partner gives you rather than as Xperios records.

After you have submitted

The Arts Council's analysts review every return for large year-on-year differences and gaps, and may come back to you with queries — you get at least two weeks to answer them.

That is the moment to run the same queries for Last Year. Having both years in front of you, from the same definitions, is a much faster way to explain a jump than reconstructing last year's figure from memory.

See also

• Queries — running them, and asking for one you cannot see
• Parameters — how the filters above behave
• Registers and attendance — where a pupil with no pupil record comes from
• Schools — where the DfE number is edited
• Settings > CRM — the ethnic group list and its central codes
• Dashboards — putting the tile on a dashboard of your own