Every school the Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education approves files the same Annual Report, whether it teaches English, phlebotomy or welding. The form does not care what you teach. It cares whether you can say, per program, how many students you had, how many finished, how many got jobs, and what you charged. Here is what each line asks for, where the number has to come from, and what happens on December 2.
Written October 2026 · Facts checked against Education Code § 94934, 5 CCR § 74110, bppe.ca.gov and the Bureau’s published citations
Most of what is written about the Annual Report is written for beauty schools, because they are the biggest group of small private schools in California. If you run a language school, an allied health program or a trade school, the form is identical. What differs is which lines are hard for you, and which ones are a trap.
The lines, and where each number lives
Education Code section 94934 lists what the report must contain. The Bureau’s online form turns that list into pages. Read as a school that is not a beauty school:
- Enrollment, by program
How many students were enrolled in each program during the calendar year. Not how many are enrolled today. A language school with rolling starts and four tracks has to count every student who was active at any point in the year, once, in the right program, even if they changed level three times. This is the line that goes wrong when the roster is a spreadsheet rebuilt every session.
- Degrees and diplomas awarded, by level
How many students completed and what they received. For a certificate program it is the number of certificates of completion you issued in the year, which means you need a list of what you issued and when, not a memory of it.
- The School Performance Fact Sheet for each program
The completion rate and the placement rate for the program, calculated the way 5 CCR § 74112 says, plus license exam passage where a license exists (a CNA or phlebotomy program yes, an English program no) and salary data where you collected it. The form asks you to attach the fact sheet you gave prospective students; the numbers on it have to reconcile with the enrollment and completion lines above. How the completion and placement rates are calculated.
- Total charges for each program, by period of attendance
What a student pays for the whole program, and per period if you charge by month or term. A language school charging by the month has to state the monthly charge and the total for the program length it publishes.
- The catalog
The current one, attached. If the programs on the catalog and the programs on the enrollment line do not match, that is a question the Bureau will ask.
- Whether programs are offered online, and other institutional facts
Delivery method, accreditation and any accreditor disciplinary action in the year, and the STRF statement. The Bureau added labor market and other data points over time; take the form’s wording as current, not this post’s.
- Financial statements, if required
Degree-granting institutions and some others attach audited or reviewed financials. Most certificate schools do not, but check the instructions for the year, because the Bureau has cited schools for a report filed “without financial statements”.
Where the numbers actually come from
Every line above is a count of students with a date on it. Enrolled in the year means an enrollment with a start date in or before the year and no end date before it. Completed means a completion date in the year. Placed means an employment record with a date within the window the SPFS rules set. Charged means the price on the enrollment agreement the student signed.
A school that keeps those four things on one student record can produce the report in an afternoon in August. A school that keeps them in an attendance binder, a roster spreadsheet, a folder of certificates and a filing cabinet of agreements produces it in November, by hand, and reconciles the differences by guessing. That is not a character flaw. It is what four separate places do to the same number.
December 2
The Bureau’s enforcement page lists the citations it has issued for an Annual Report that was not filed. The pattern is consistent: letters go out in the spring and again in the autumn, then a citation with a $5,000 fine. Schools that then file and appeal often get the fine cut, sometimes to a few hundred dollars. The citation itself does not go away; it sits on the public list with the school’s name on it, where a prospective student, an accreditor or a buyer can find it.
The cheaper path is the boring one. Keep the record current through the year, open the portal when it opens on August 1, and file before the week everyone else files. The compliance calendar has every date, and the BPPE guide covers what sits around the report: the fact sheet, the catalog, the STRF filing that is still due quarterly at a zero rate.
What Udooku does about it, and what it doesn’t
On the Compliance plan, Udooku builds the Annual Report roster and the completion-rate report from the enrollments, attendance and issued documents the school already keeps, so the enrollment, completion and charge lines come from one place. It does not file the report for you, it does not generate the School Performance Fact Sheet document, and it does not hold placement surveys or salary data; those are yours to collect and enter. If you run a language school or another non-beauty vocational school, the record is the same one the beauty schools use.
- Education Code § 94934, Annual Report
- 5 CCR § 74110, Annual Report and § 74112, School Performance Fact Sheet
- Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education, Annual Report page and instructions
- Bureau citation 1937401, $5,000 fine for an unfiled Annual Report and citation 1617009, report filed without financial statements
