Guidance

Special educational needs person level survey: technical specification

Technical specification and validation rules for local authorities completing returns for the 2027 special educational needs person level surveys (SEN2).

• From: Department for Education
• Published: 26 August 2022
• Last updated: 15 October 2026
  Show all updates

  1. 15 October 2026

     "Special educational needs person level survey 2027: validation rules" spreadsheet replaced to show updated validations.

  2. 10 September 2026

     Updated 'Special educational needs person level survey 2027: validation rules'. Changes are described in the version history.

  3. 17 August 2026

     Updated 'Special educational needs person level survey 2027: technical specification' (the changes are noted in the version history), and removed documents related to 2026 returns.

  4. 3 December 2025

     Added 'Special educational needs person level survey 2027: technical specification' and 'Special educational needs person level survey 2027: validation rules'.

  5. 26 November 2025

     Updated 'Special educational needs person level survey 2026: validation rules'. The version history describes the changes.

  6. 24 January 2025

     Added the technical specification and validation rules for 2026.

  7. 11 November 2024

     'Special educational needs person level survey 2025: technical specification' has been updated. Changes are described in the version history.

  8. 9 October 2024

     '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.

  9. 15 February 2024

     'Special educational needs person level technical specification 2025' has been updated. Changes are described in the version history.

  10. 12 January 2024

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

  11. 18 December 2023

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

  12. 9 November 2023

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

  13. 14 June 2023

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

  14. 16 January 2023

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

  15. 28 December 2022

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

  16. 14 October 2022

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

  17. 26 August 2022

      First published.

Applies to England

Documents

Special educational needs person level survey 2027: technical specification

PDF, 473 KB, 29 pages

Special educational needs person level survey 2027: validation rules

MS Excel Spreadsheet, 66.3 KB

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.