Free SEN training you can start now: Behaviour is Communication, a 15-minute scenario-based CPD module for TAs and teachers. No sign-up, no card, certificate.
Module 1 of Sensory Spark Training is free, open to anyone, and needs no sign-up. There is no card to enter, no trial clock and no email to confirm before you start. You open the module, read a short plain-English introduction, and step into a lunchtime incident that you live through twice: once as it usually goes, and once with a different set of choices. Along the way you meet the iceberg model of behaviour, learn to record ABC evidence (antecedent, behaviour, consequence) in a way that stands up in a meeting, and leave with your first printable classroom tool. The module runs across nine steps and finishes with an eleven-question quiz. Every answer has to be correct, and you can retake it as many times as you like. Notional learning time is fifteen minutes, which fits a lunch break or the end of a PPA slot.
Yes. When you finish the quiz you complete a short learner declaration and a printable certificate is issued with a unique reference number. The certificate states the module's CPD minutes, so it can go straight into a teaching assistant's CPD file or a teacher's professional development record. Completions are linked to your account if you choose to sign in, and your place in the module is saved in your browser either way. Be clear with your line manager about what the certificate is: provider-certified, awareness-level CPD from Sensory Spark. It is not externally accredited yet. Specialist peer review by practising SENCOs, specialist teachers and allied professionals is in progress and sixteen reviewer comments are already published on the training page, with formal accreditation review to follow.
Not in the qualification sense, and it is worth being precise because the two get mixed up. If you are searching for a free Level 2 or Level 3 teaching assistant course, you are looking for an accredited qualification, usually through a college or a government-funded provider, with assessed placements. Sensory Spark Training is different. It is continuing professional development for people already working in or around a classroom: teaching assistants, teachers, cover staff, lunchtime supervisors and SENCOs. The free module teaches one specific thing well, how to read behaviour as communication and respond to it, rather than certifying you for a job role. Many TAs use it exactly that way: fifteen minutes of free CPD this week on a topic that comes up every single day, and a decision afterwards about whether the full pathway is worth asking their school to fund.
The training sits inside a wider free toolkit. There are more than thirty free sensory games that run in any browser with no sign-up, including Touch Garden, Bubble Meadow, Weather Maker, Feed Me, First Then and Sort It Out, which work on tablets and interactive whiteboards. There is a free 12-page EYFS sensory curriculum covering the seven areas of learning across five levels with the Engagement Model built in. There is a 42-activity speech and language library and a set of practitioner guides on the Engagement Model and questioning. The AI Sensory Activity Generator gives you ten free credits to try. None of these need payment, and several of the training modules point you towards them as the practical follow-through for what you have just learned.
Nothing automatic. You are not enrolled in anything and no subscription starts. If the free module was useful, the rest of the pathway is 25 more modules and 6 capstone simulations, around eight hours in total, and it is unlocked by a school licence rather than a personal payment. The licence is £99 a year for unlimited staff at one school or setting. The licence holder invites colleagues to their own accounts and can see completion counts, so a SENCO or headteacher gets a live staff training record without chasing paperwork. If your school prefers to wait for external accreditation, you can register interest for a £79.99 first-year offer that opens once accreditation is achieved. Registering is free and starts nothing.
See what the full pathway covers
Anyone who spends their working day with children and is tired of being told to be consistent without being told what to be consistent about. Teaching assistants who are handed the pupil with the biggest file on their first morning. Teachers who have done the behaviour INSET and still have a child who tips the room over at 9:20. Lunchtime staff who see more incidents than anyone and get the least training. Trainee teachers and early career teachers building a CPD record. SENCOs who want a shared language across the team before they roll anything out. If you want to see how the approach reads before you start, the behaviour is communication guide on this site covers the thinking behind the module in plain language.
Read: what behaviour is communication means
Email: support@sensoryspark.co.uk
Address: United Kingdom
Yes. Module 1, Behaviour is Communication, is free with no sign-up, no card and no trial period. Nothing is charged and no subscription starts afterwards.
Yes. After the quiz and a learner declaration you receive a printable certificate with a unique reference and the module's CPD minutes.
No. It is awareness-level CPD for people already working in schools, not an accredited job-role qualification.
The free module is open to everyone. The remaining 25 modules and 6 capstones are unlocked by a school licence, £99 a year for unlimited staff at one setting.