Guidance

Special educational needs person level survey: technical specification

Technical specification and validation rules for local authorities completing returns for the 2024 and 2025 special educational needs person level survey (SEN2).

Applies to England

Documents

Details

The technical specification should be used if you are:

  • responsible for the SEN2 data return
  • a supplier of software for local authority management information systems

The specification contains:

  • a description of what local authorities should supply at local authority and person level
  • how to structure the data in XML
  • how to check the data against the validation rules

You should also read the common basic data set. This defines common data items that we use in our data collections.

Published 26 August 2022
Last updated 15 February 2024 + show all updates
  1. 'Special educational needs person level technical specification 2025' has been updated. Changes are described in the version history.

  2. 'Special educational needs person level survey 2024: validation rules' has been updated. Changes are described in the version history.

  3. Added 'Special educational needs person level survey 2025: validation rules' and 'Special educational needs person level technical specification 2025' documents.

  4. 'Special educational needs person level technical specification 2024' has been updated. Changes are described in the version history.

  5. Added the 2024 special educational needs person level survey validation rules and technical specification.

  6. 'Special educational needs person level survey 2023: validation rules' has been updated. Changes are described in the version history.

  7. '2023 SEN2 person level Annex A validation rules v1.3' has been added, with changes made for v1.2 viewable in the version history.

  8. The special educational needs person level technical specifications and validation rules for SEN2 have been updated for 2023.

  9. First published.