Ontario Education Number (OEN)

Official documents for verifying a student's date of birth

List of the Ministry's official documents for verifying birthdates:

Creating a Batch Request File for students without OENs using the Maplewood Administration System

Creating a Batch Request File for students without OENs using Maplewood Central Office

Importing OENs from the Ministry's Result File into Maplewood Student Records

Creating a batch file for transfer of students to our school as their main school

Overview

An Ontario Education Number (OEN) is assigned by the Ministry of Education to every student in the province's elementary and secondary education system. The 9-digit OEN is unique to every student and is tied to stable personal information about each student (names, gender, date of birth). The Ministry has an OEN application, accessible through the internet, to manage the assignment of the OENs. School and school board staff will use this application to obtain OENs for their students. The OEN number will appear on the Ontario Provincial Report Card in the space at the end of the field provided for the name of the student.

The Ministry's OEN application has three methods to request OENs as explained in their documentation:

1. On-line and in real-time

2. Batch process

3. Paper form

The Maplewood system is used in conjunction with the "Batch Process" method.  The Batch Process method is used when you have to obtain OENs for a large number of students and when using the on-line method would not be practical.  This method uses a file created by Maplewood which is submitted to Ministry's OEN application.  The file is processed overnight and results should be available the next business day for your review.

Here is a summary of the Batch Process method of obtaining OENs:

1. Using the Maplewood system, create a batch request file. This file will contain information on students who do not have OENs entered in the Maplewood system.

2. Using the Ministry's OEN application, upload the batch request file to the Ministry.

3. The Ministry's OEN application creates a batch results file.

4. The Ministry emails notification when the batch results are ready for review.  Matches must be resolved and cases of invalid data must be addressed.

5. Using the Maplewood system, import the batch results file from the Ministry into your Maplewood data.  This will record the newly assigned OENs into the enrolment area of the students' records.

This Help Sheet will explain how to create a batch request file for students who do not yet have an OEN, and how to import the newly assigned OENs from the result file generated by the Ministry. 

For further information on the OEN process and the Ministry's OEN system, refer to the Ministry of Education Ontario Education Number (OEN) Handbook for Schools and Boards.

Official documents for verifying a student's date of birth

The Ministry has created a list of official documents used by the school to obtain/verify the student’s date of birth.  In Maplewood, these official documents have been added to the Birthdate Verification table.  The table may still contain some of the school's original documents which are no longer acceptable to the Ministry.  To prevent the use of these “unofficial” documents, we would like you to make the following changes to your table:

1. Within Maplewood, select Students, Custom Fields/Titles, Enrolment Tables, Birthdate Verification.

2. The entries without a Ministry number are no longer acceptable documents for the Ministry.  We would suggest that you edit these entries and include some text indicating that they should no longer be used.  For example, Birth Registration is no longer an official document, so change the text to say “Unofficial - Birth Registration” or “Birth Registration - Obsolete” or “Birth Registration - Do Not Use”.

You do not need to change the students’ birthdate verification entries.  Students with these unofficial entries will be considered as “Other” when the OEN file is created.

As you start to enter new students, it is important that you no longer accept any of these unofficial documents when verifying the student’s birthdate. 

Note:  Since you may have students who use these entries (current and past students), it is not advisable to remove them from the table without first checking that they are not in use. The Inquiry program will be able to tell you if any students are still using those entries.  Remember that you would need to do an inquiry for Present Students and a separate inquiry for Past Students.

Ministry's official documents for verifying birthdates:

Notes:

1. If a student has unknown for his/her birthdate verification, it will be interpreted as code 99 (Not Available) in the OEN file.
2. If you add an entry to the table and assign it a Ministry Number that is not accepted by the Ministry, it will be interpreted as code 98 (Other) in the OEN file.
3. The Ministry Numbers in the table may optionally include leading zero. Leading zeros are not included in the OEN file.

Creating a Batch Request File for students without OENs using the Maplewood Administration System

Students whose origin type is one of the following OnSIS codes (different from min code) will be excluded from the OEN Batch File containing data on students for whom OEN's are required:

05 - Public elementary within the same board

09 - Public secondary within same board

19 - Separate secondary within same board

27 - Separate elementary within the same board

29 - Public secondary from another board 30 - Separate secondary from another board

31 - Public elementary from another board

32 - Separate elementary from another board

The Batch Process method of requesting OENs for a group of students uses a file created within Maplewood.  This file contains information for a group of students and is submitted to the Ministry’s OEN system.  This allows the school to make a direct request for OENs for multiple students at one time.

To create the Batch Request file:

1. Within Maplewood, select Reports, Ontario Education Number (OEN), Create Batch File.

2. Unless you want to change the name of the file, or the group of registered students to be included, click the Create Batch button to create the file. 

Note: Rather than sending a large batch file to the OEN application, the Ministry recommends that you separate it into manageable portions for easier handling and match resolution.  Maplewood will default that all students (e.g. using the 'alphabetical' option) without an OEN will be included in the file.

The defaulted file name corresponds to the school's Ministry number and date (e.g. 123420020930). The file is automatically stored in the Maplewood data folder in the sub folders OEN/Request, and it will have the file extension “xml” (e.g. f:/admin/oen/request/123420020930.xml.  You may rename the filename but keep the extension "xml".

Creating a Batch Request File for students without OENs using Maplewood Central Office

Students whose origin type is one of the following OnSIS codes (different from min code) will be excluded from the OEN Batch File containing data on students for whom OEN's are required:

05 - Public elementary within the same board

09 - Public secondary within same board

19 - Separate secondary within same board

27 - Separate elementary within the same board

29 - Public secondary from another board 30 - Separate secondary from another board

31 - Public elementary from another board

32 - Separate elementary from another board

The OEN request files for the schools can also be created through Maplewood Central Office. 

1. From Central Office, choose Ontario Education Number (OEN), Create Batch File.

2. Select the Schools to be included by clicking the Schools button.

3. Next click the Create Batch File button. The program will process the schools and then display a message indicating that the files have been automatically stored in the Maplewood Central Office data folder (OEN/Request). The defaulted file name corresponds to the school's Ministry number and date (e.g. 123420020930), and it will have the file extension “xml”.

When the Ministry returns a file with the newly assigned OENs, the files must be imported at each school, not through Maplewood Central Office.

Refer to the Ministry documentation for information on submitting the file to the Ministry’s OEN system.

Importing OENs from the Ministry's Result File into Maplewood Student Records

After the Ministry’s OEN application has processed the school’s request file, a response file is made available where the school can obtain the Ministry's assigned OENs.  We suggest that you place a copy of that file in your Maplewood data folder in the subfolder OEN\Result.

To import the OENs from the Ministry’s result file:

1. As a precaution,  make a backup of your Maplewood data by choosing File, Maintenance, Backup/Restore.
2. From Maplewood, select Reports, Ontario Education Number (OEN), Import Batch File.
3. Check whether or not you wish to report students for whom OEN numbers were not given.
   After importing you will only get two reports: 'students for whom numbers were assigned' and 'students who do not belong to this school'.
4. Click the Browse button to find the result file obtained from the Ministry.
5. Click the Import button.

Upon completion of the import, a report is generated indicating the students who have had OENs assigned to their student record in the OEN number field in the Enrolment tab.

The report may also indicate students whose OENs were not assigned.  These are students whose information matches another record in the Ministry's database who is potentially the same student.  For these students, use the Ministry's OEN system to identify whether this student is the same student or is someone unique.  Through this process the student's OEN issue is resolved.

Occasionally, the report may also indicate students who are not enrolled in this school. These are students that have had either their surnames, 3 letter codes, or birthdates changed since the request was made for OENs. For these students, click the Edit button on the Enrolment tab of each student record to enter the OEN number manually.

Note: The request file contains the student's 3 letter code in the Student Identifier field. This code is only changed when a student's surname initial is changed (e.g. Smith to Black would result in a new 3 letter code but Smith to Smith-Jackson would not).

Creating a batch file for transfer of students to our school as their main school

Maplewood will now generate a batch file that can be submitted to the OEN web application for the transfer of students to our school as their main school?

ONSiS has now added the ability to change a student's main school (e.g. a transfer), if a school has a student whose OEN was generated at School A, but now attends School B. Maplewood has a batch update process by which you can submit current students and have the system automatically update the student at the School B. Maplewood has created an option to Update the Current MAIN School within the OEN system, called OEN Home School Validation.  This new option when run will  generate a file for the school (or board), listing all the students with the MIDENT of their current main school.

To do this, choose Reports, OEN/OnSIS, Update Current Main (Home) School, Create Main (Home) School File. 

This file, when loaded into the OEN system, will change the main school in the OEN database so that the main school can make changes.  When the file is processed within the OEN system, a response file is generated. The feature within Maplewood to import the response file can be used to display an error report that lists the errors for the school to address.

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Revised  06/01/2016