Research and expertise
The expertise behind the platform
Senso brings together more than 25 years of founder-led education technology experience with the knowledge of safeguarding specialists, former teachers, school IT practitioners, product experts and cloud engineers. That combined experience shapes a platform used by more than 12,000 schools across 30 countries.
Built by people who understand schools, safeguarding and technology.
25+ years
Founder-led education technology experience
12,000+
Schools using Senso worldwide
30 countries
International school experience
24/7/365
Assisted human monitoring available
Disciplines
Expertise is not an advisory layer. It is built into Senso.
The people who research emerging risks, support schools, review safeguarding concerns and understand school networks contribute directly to how Senso is designed and improved. This creates a continuous connection between real school experience and product development.
Safeguarding and wellbeing
Specialists with experience spanning DSL leadership, SEND, mental health, school governance, vulnerable learners, criminology, digital forensics, social research and youth crime help Senso understand the context behind a potential concern.
Teaching and classroom practice
Former teachers, school leaders and teacher-development specialists contribute an understanding of lesson flow, classroom behaviour, accessibility and the practical pressures faced by educators.
School IT and operations
People with direct school IT and technical-support experience help shape deployment, remote support, device management, filtering, service desk and asset-management capabilities around the realities of school estates.
Product and cloud engineering
Product managers, software engineers and cloud specialists turn frontline expertise into scalable services, practical workflows and connected capabilities across student safety, classroom control and school IT.
Founder experience
More than 25 years of education technology experience
Senso is led by founder and CEO Jon Valentine, whose work in education technology began more than 25 years ago. His early work helped pioneer keyword-based safeguarding detection with contextual visual evidence for schools, establishing an approach that has since become widely adopted across the sector.
That experience informed the creation of Senso as a cloud-native platform designed from the outset to connect student safety, classroom management and school IT. First commercial orders were received from early adopters in late 2017, followed by the official launch in January 2018.
"More than 25 years ago, the ambition was never simply to identify a concerning word or phrase. It was about giving educators the context and evidence to understand and respond to what students were doing and writing on school computers, while creating technology that could support the whole school. That early vision has stayed with me throughout my career, and today Senso carries it forward on a global scale."
2001
Early development of keyword-based safeguarding detection with contextual visual evidence for schools.
2016
Senso incorporated to build a cloud-native unified education platform.
2017
First commercial orders received from early adopters.
2018
Official Senso launch.
Today
Used by more than 12,000 schools across 30 countries.
The team
Human experience adds meaning to technology
Automated detection can identify potential concerns at scale. Experienced people help interpret context, distinguish noise from genuine risk and support schools with clearer evidence.
School safeguarding leadership
More than 15 years in primary and secondary education, including experience as a SENDCo, Senior Mental Health Lead, DSL and Deputy Head.
Teaching and teacher development
Ten years in education, including teaching, teacher development and work focused on raising awareness of online risk.
Criminology and human moderation
Postgraduate criminology knowledge combined with direct experience of human moderation and safeguarding review.
Digital forensics
Previous police digital-forensics experience, bringing disciplined evidence analysis to online safeguarding.
Vulnerable learners and SEND
Experience supporting vulnerable learners and improving the safety and wellbeing of young people with SEND.
Social research and school governance
Teaching and social-research experience covering substance use and youth crime, together with school governance and safeguarding-link responsibility.
Names, roles and biographical details will be published with individual consent and accuracy confirmation before launch.
Assisted Monitoring
Expertise applied around the clock
Senso's Assisted Monitoring Service works alongside Safeguard to provide trained human review of potential concerns. Specialists assess context, triage captures and help ensure that the most important information reaches the right school team.
The capture does not represent a safeguarding or behavioural concern. No school action is required.
The capture may represent a safeguarding or behavioural concern but is not assessed as urgent. Authorised school staff can review it and record the action taken.
The capture represents an urgent potential concern. The nominated school contact is alerted by email and, where appropriate, telephone.
Review interface concept
Weekly reporting
Weekly reporting helps safeguarding teams understand the volume, severity and pattern of concerns, supporting both individual response and wider strategic review.
42%
of captures reclassified as critical after human review
Senso Assisted Monitoring internal reporting
42 percent of captures initially classified as low, medium or high were assessed as critical after human review.
This finding demonstrates why an initial automated severity classification should support, not replace, experienced human judgement. A capture that appears lower severity to an automated system may contain context that materially changes its safeguarding significance when reviewed by a trained specialist. Automatically filtering out lower-severity captures risks removing the very evidence needed to recognise a critical concern.
Continuous improvement
School experience continuously improves the platform
This feedback loop allows safeguarding, education, IT and engineering knowledge to reinforce one another. It is one of the reasons Senso can connect areas that are usually sold and developed as separate point solutions.
Listen
Listen to schools and frontline specialists.
Research
Research changing risks, language, platforms and operating environments.
Translate
Translate insight into product design, policies and workflows.
Deploy
Deploy, support and observe how capabilities work in practice.
Review
Review outcomes and feed learning back into the platform.
Research areas
Across every part of the platform
Safeguarding language and behaviour
Ongoing development of keyphrase libraries, coded-language understanding, contextual evidence and false-positive reduction.
AI-assisted image analysis
Research into image classification, image blurring, accuracy, context and the appropriate role of human review.
Classroom practice
Understanding how visibility, interaction, attention controls and teacher workflows can support learning without creating unnecessary complexity.
Filtering and emerging circumvention
Research into web categorisation, application-aware controls, VPN and proxy avoidance, off-network protection and changing browser behaviour.
Device and IT operations
Ongoing work across deployment, remote support, platform coverage, endpoint performance, asset insight and school service-desk workflows.
Cloud, identity and multi-school management
Development shaped around regional Azure services, role-based administration, Microsoft 365 and Teams integration, and central management for both individual schools and large school groups.
Platform-specific capability varies by product. See the platform coverage page for maintained details.
Regional context
Global platform. Regional understanding.
Regional context shown based on your current region. Change region using the selector in the navigation.
United Kingdom
Senso's UK experience includes the practical role of DSLs, safeguarding teams, schools and multi-academy trusts, together with the contribution technology can make within frameworks such as Keeping Children Safe in Education.
Senso helps schools implement, operate and evidence their own approach. Senso does not claim automatic or universal legal compliance.
United Kingdom
Senso's UK experience includes the practical role of DSLs, safeguarding teams, schools and multi-academy trusts, together with the contribution technology can make within frameworks such as Keeping Children Safe in Education.
United States
Senso works with US schools and districts, applying its platform to K-12 student safety, classroom and IT needs. The platform supports the student safety lead role and recognises that policies and responsibilities vary between districts and states.
Australia
Senso supports Australian schools in addressing student wellbeing, child safety and online-environment responsibilities, including the practical intent of National Principle 8, with capabilities designed around the safeguarding lead role.
Evidence
Applied expertise at scale
Scale
Experience gained through deployment in more than 12,000 schools across 30 countries.
Connected disciplines
Safeguarding, classroom, filtering, IT operations, service desk, asset and monitoring expertise brought together in one company and platform.
Human and technical insight
Automated analysis, contextual evidence, human review and school experience working together rather than operating as isolated layers.
Customer stories
LEO Academy Trust
How a 14-school trust improved safeguarding insight and saved hours each week.
Read story →Bartley Green School
Combined filtering and monitoring protecting students on and off-site year-round.
Read story →Katherine Warington School
Safeguarding, classroom management and IT operations in a single platform.
Read story →See it in practice
See what this expertise means in practice
Book a demonstration to explore how Senso combines student safety, classroom control and school IT in one connected platform.