Special educational needs person level survey: technical specification
Technical specification and validation rules for local authorities completing returns for the 2025 and 2026 special educational needs person level surveys (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.
Updates to this page
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Added the technical specification and validation rules for 2026.
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'Special educational needs person level survey 2025: technical specification' has been updated. Changes are described in the version history.
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'Special educational needs person level technical specification 2025' and 'Special educational needs person level survey 2025: validation rules' have been updated. Changes are described in the version history.
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'Special educational needs person level technical specification 2025' has been updated. Changes are described in the version history.
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'Special educational needs person level survey 2024: validation rules' has been updated. Changes are described in the version history.
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Added 'Special educational needs person level survey 2025: validation rules' and 'Special educational needs person level technical specification 2025' documents.
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'Special educational needs person level technical specification 2024' has been updated. Changes are described in the version history.
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Added the 2024 special educational needs person level survey validation rules and technical specification.
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'Special educational needs person level survey 2023: validation rules' has been updated. Changes are described in the version history.
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'2023 SEN2 person level Annex A validation rules v1.3' has been added, with changes made for v1.2 viewable in the version history.
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The special educational needs person level technical specifications and validation rules for SEN2 have been updated for 2023.
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First published.