About SENDCO Solutions & SENsible SENCO

Abigail has worked through all phases of education, training initally as a science teacher, she went into primary, FE and then Secondary. In 2016 she took "voluntary redundancy" from a school in Nottingham.

In 2016 Abigail became the SEN Consultant for Edukey, now Provision Map. Creating the majority of the provisions within the system and censor checking compliance with the SEN Code of Practice. To start with she was paid in Amazon vouchers.

Whilst Abigail continued with Edukey, and still works with TES who now own Provision Map, it was time to start her own venture. Hawkins SEN Consultancy, this name was swiftly changed to SENDCO Solutions.

In 2018 Abigail published her first book, Approach it, Map it, Manage it. A book that we still sell today on our bookshop within SENsible SENCO. Other books where published as well, including Exclusions - A Parents Guide, The SENDCO - a series of books around being a SENCO. Abigail hopes to work on more books in the future.

In 2019 Abigail started a YouTube channel, dedicated to helping SENCOs in role understand the fundimentals of being a SENCO. For over a year Abigail produced weekly videos on different subjects in an informal discussion approach with Gavin, her husband supporting.

Just before COVID we created a Facebook group for SENCOs to join and have a virtual hug, being a SENCO can be a very lonely role and creating the group gave a glimmer of hope to many that there is support out there. As COVID took hold the group went from 600 members to 6000 within a year, and now in 2024 sits at over 13,200 SENCOs and SEN professionals.

With the success of Edukey, in April 2020 we decided to open our doors to the Ed-Tech world and support them with the development of products and services. We worked on several different projects increasing our own awareness of how much support the sector really needed.

In 2021 Abigail was approached by United Learning to develop a Level 3 Teaching Assistant Apprenticeship, something she continued to lead, having had 6 cohorts and 100's of TAs go through the scheme.

In 2022 we decided we wanted to give more back to the community of SENCOs we supported and changed SENSible SENCO from a limited company to a Community Interest Company, it now distributes all it's revenue back into the community in the form of further development, give aways and free webinar sessions.

We've always been interested in technology and as Ai came into the horizon we were checking out what it could do, not only to benefit ourselves, but also how it could support SEND students. Now we use AI to help us give more back to the schools in a more effective timescale. We've even created a few webinars on the subject.

With the growth of SENsible SENCO, SENDCO Solutions took a bit of a backseat. In February 2024 we ran our first every conference for SENCOs, SENsible24, this conference was hugely successful and we look forward to running SENsible25 in Feb 2025.

With the success of SENsible SENCO and the ever increase work from SENDCO Solutions Abigail takes the hard decision to pull back from the TA Apprenticeships to spend more time work on her projects. She will never forget the changes that she had made to so many TA's lives and the confidence that she brought to them.

The TA programme inspired us to create content that could be used to support TAs at low/no cost, and as we love tech, we decidedit couldn't just be another powerpoint, we wanted something interactive. So we purchased a Samsung WAD smartboard, not only did this have possibly one of the biggest ripples we have caused but it lead to a lasting partnership and something more.

In partnership with Samsung and our friends at BirkettLong LLP we created and turned around SENsible24 Legal Conference at the Samsung centre in Londons Kingscross. With ECHPs on the rise, a funding crisis in schools and the misinformation we had seen in the community, we felt it our duty to correct this.

SENsible24 was such a success that we have planned SENsible 25, this time covering the identification and assessment. To go with our informal, friendly style we also opened a SENCO quiz night the day before where SENCOs could join in and win some great prizes.