Before starting my own tutoring service for children with Special Educational Needs and it’s accompanying blog, I was a SENCO in a Secondary School.

I remember all to well my first day as SENCO. Stepping into my new school and new role I was excited. But If I’m honest my main feelings on that day were of being completely overwhelmed by all of the new responsibilities I had.

If I had of read this book in the summer leading up to my first day as SENCO I would have felt a lot more prepared and confident about my new role.

Therefore, I genuinely would recommend this book to any SENCOs (new or established). 

What did I like about it? 

• Its empowering! Being a SENCO is a wonderful job but you can often find yourself conflicted and guilt ridden by decisions you make. You want   to make changes to the school and teaching for the benefit of the children with Special Educational Needs. But, as with any change, there’s often resistance. And not all of your ideas will met with agreement. This book’s ‘Top Tip’ sections- gives SENCOs advice on what to do to and how to do it. Empowering SENCOs to do the best for the SEN children in their schools.

• It reduces workload by providing useful templates. Im a big believer in the phrase ‘don’t re-invent the wheel’. There is often little point in spending hours producing documents that have already been perfected many times before. Natalie Packer’s book provides useful templates from Action Plans and Pupil Passports to Provision Maps and Questionnaires that can be modified to suit your own school and save time. 

• Provides Case Studies of real life SENCOs. For each chapter of this book there are Case Studies showing what other SENCOs have done in their schools when in similar situations. Providing excellent and up to date ideas and suggestions of what has and hasn’t worked.

• Signposts you to other useful books such as ‘Beating Bureaucracy in Special Educational Needs’ by J. Gross.