The personal journey
Navigating SEND as a family — the assessments, the meetings, the waiting, and the difficulty of knowing whether the support around a child was actually making a difference.
Our story
Two journeys that met in the same question.
Elevate began where a personal experience of SEND met a professional life spent measuring whether things actually change.
One journey was personal. Navigating SEND from the inside showed how hard it is for a family to know whether the support surrounding a child is translating into meaningful change — and how much energy is spent on process rather than progress.
The other journey was professional: years working alongside data analysts on closed-loop measurement, where the discipline is simple but demanding. Establish a baseline. Act. Measure what changed. Decide what happens next.
Bringing the two together led to one question: what if the professional development that surrounds children with SEND was measured with the same rigour? Not to grade teachers, but to give them clarity about where their confidence and practice are strongest and where support would help most.
Children come first. Teachers are how that happens. Our aim is an environment where every child feels the support around them is genuinely working — and where the adults supporting them can see the evidence for it.
That question became Elevate SEND.
The professional journey
A career spent with data analysts building closed-loop measurement systems — where nothing is judged by activity alone, and every intervention is measured against what changed as a result.
Children first.
Confident, well-supported teachers are the most direct route to a child feeling properly supported in the classroom.
The measurement gap
Closed-loop measurement, applied to professional development.
Traditional evaluation usually reports what happened. Closed-loop measurement is designed to establish what happened, what changed as a result, and what should happen next.
Before
Baseline
What is the starting point?
During
Intervention
What development is taking place?
After
Reassessment
What changed?
Outcome
Evidence
What should happen next?
Designed for decision-makers
Built with senior stakeholders in mind.
Headteachers, SENDCos, MAT executives, governors and local authority leaders are all asked to justify professional development spend. Elevate is designed so the confidence and assessment reports answer the questions those conversations actually turn on.
- Where are our greatest development needs across the cohort?
- Where is confidence high but applied judgement lower?
- What changed following the professional development we commissioned?
- Which areas still require further intervention?
- What evidence can we take into a governors' or trust board discussion?
Reports are aggregated and permission-controlled by default. Individual results are for the professional’s own development — the leadership view is about where to focus next, not who to hold to account.
Headteachers & SENDCos
A defensible starting point
Baseline confidence and assessment reports show where the cohort is before decisions about development are made.
MAT executives
Consistency across schools
The same measures applied across settings, so comparison is like for like and priorities can be ranked.
Governors & local authorities
Evidence, not activity logs
Reassessment reports set out observed change against the baseline, alongside what the evidence does and does not support.
Why us
Lived experience. Measurement expertise. SEND knowledge.
Elevate is not simply a technology product. It combines human understanding, measurement, technology and specialist SEND expertise.
Lived experience
Understanding the real-world challenge families and schools are working through.
Data & measurement
Experience building data-driven and closed-loop measurement systems in commercial environments.
SEND expertise
Specialist knowledge from our advisors and the wider team, applied to the measurement framework.