From Newsletter to Installation: How One Specialist School made its Corridors more navigable for its learners
A headteacher with a hunch, a sample kit, a school visit, and six months later corridors that feel genuinely different. This is the full story of Sensei's first complete school installation, and what every stage of the journey actually looked like.
Most schools that end up making real changes to their physical environment don't do it because someone told them to. They do it because one person a SENCO, a head of inclusion, a headteacher had a quiet, persistent feeling that something wasn't right. And eventually found a way to act on it.
This is the story of one of those people. And of the school that looks and feels different because of her.
The School
Welcombe Hills School is a specialist needs school in Stratford-upon-Avon, part of the Unity Multi-Academy Trust. Like most specialist SEND schools, it serves a diverse range of learner profiles pupils with visual impairment, autism spectrum conditions, sensory processing disorder, ADHD, and a range of developmental and cognitive needs.
Navigation moving through the building independently, without anxiety, without needing a member of staff to guide the way had always been a challenge. Not because the school hadn't tried. But because the available solutions hadn't quite fit.
The Problem With What Already Existed
The headteacher had worked with coloured wall strips in a previous school. Colour-coding corridors and rooms is a well-established approach, and it works up to a point. It works if your learners have sufficient visual acuity to distinguish colours reliably. It works if the lighting is consistent. It works if the learner isn't experiencing a moment of anxiety that narrows their attention.
For many SEND learners, those conditions can't be guaranteed. Colour alone is a visual cue and visual cues only work for learners who can consistently access them.
“What I really wanted was something they could feel. Something that didn't rely on sight being perfect on any given day, in any given moment.” - Headteacher
What she was describing without yet knowing the word for it was tactile wayfinding. A system of navigation built not around what learners can see, but around what they can feel. Consistent textures at consistent points in the building, creating an environmental language that works regardless of a learner's visual capacity on any particular day.
She came across Sensei through our newsletter. She didn't reach out immediately. She read. She watched. She waited to see whether it was the kind of thing that looked good in a pitch deck but didn't survive contact with a real school.
Stage 1: The Sample Kit — Testing Before Committing
When she felt ready, she ordered a sample kit. Not a consultation call, not a site survey just the panels themselves, sent to the school for her team to explore.
This is how most schools start with Sensei, and deliberately so. The sample kit exists because we understand that SEND school leaders have been let down before by solutions that seemed promising in theory. The kit puts physical evidence in the hands of the people who matter most the learners — before any decision is made about the building.
What happened at Welcombe Hills when staff put the panels in front of different learner groups was what tends to happen: some learners traced the raised edges with their fingertips. Some pressed their palms flat and held them there. One or two found particular textures visibly calming a response that surprised even the staff member sitting alongside them.
“You can read about tactile input supporting sensory regulation as much as you like. But watching a learner actually settle when they feel a familiar texture that's different. That tells you something.”
The headteacher sent us an email.
Stage 2: The Conversation — Listening Before Proposing
When we got on a call, we didn't open with a product presentation. We asked about the school. The learner mix. The parts of the day that were hardest not in general, but specifically: which corridors, which transitions, which moments.
We asked about what had already been tried. What had worked and why. What hadn't worked and why. Where staff time was being absorbed by navigation support rather than teaching.
Only once we had that picture did we put anything in writing a brief proposal based on what we'd heard, not a standard specification document. We suggested a visit.
Stage 3: The School Visit — Seeing the Space Together
She walked us around the school herself. Every corridor. Every transition point. The entrance, the reception wing, the junior classrooms, the senior spaces. She showed us where learners got lost, where the noise built up at certain times of day, where the bottlenecks were between lessons.
We listened, and we looked at the wall surfaces, the lighting, the way the spaces connected to each other, the height at which a learner's hands would naturally rest as they moved through a corridor.
After the visit, we came back to her with something visual: a layout map of the school showing exactly where we'd recommend placing each panel type exits, toilets, corridors, classrooms, lift and how the system would flow from the main entrance to the furthest classroom in each wing.
She had one request we hadn't anticipated. She wanted three different colours for the corridor panels one for the reception wing, one for the junior area, one for the senior area so that the colour of the panel itself gave learners an additional layer of orientation. Not just where to go, but which part of the school they were in.
Stage 4: Installation — Half-Term, No Disruption
Installation happened during the October half-term. The panels are self-adhesive they mount directly to corridor walls without drilling, without specialist contractors, without any preparation of the wall surface beyond a standard clean. The full installation was completed before staff returned from the break.
When teachers came back on the first Monday of term, the corridors were different. Not dramatically. Not in a way that required explanation or adjustment. The panels were simply there consistent, purposeful, and immediately part of the environment.
What was installed at Welcombe Hills
Tactile wayfinding panels across reception, junior, and senior wings
Three bespoke colour variants to distinguish each zone of the school
Panel types: corridors, exits, toilets, classrooms, lift
Self-adhesive installation — no drilling, no specialist contractors
Completed during October half-term with zero disruption to school days.
“Low-tech yet impactful. Exactly the kind of solution we were looking for." - Headteacher
Stage 5: Staff Training — Making It Stick
Installation is the visible part of the process. What happens afterwards determines whether it changes anything.
In January, we returned to Welcombe Hills to run a staff training session. We worked through the clinical rationale for the panels — why tactile input supports different learner profiles in different ways, and what that means practically for the adults in the room.
For learners with ASD and sensory processing disorder, consistent tactile cues at transition points can reduce the anxiety that makes corridor movement genuinely difficult. For learners with visual impairment, the panels create an environmental language they can learn and rely on. For learners with developmental delays, the texture cues support cause-and-effect understanding of space.
We also covered something that matters more than it might initially sound: how to gradually reduce prompting. The goal of the panels isn't to give learners a new thing to rely on. It's to give them a system they can internalise so that, over time, they know where they are without needing anyone to tell them.
What This Story Is Really About
Welcombe Hills didn't transform overnight. The process took six months from first email to completed installation and that's a realistic timeline for a project done properly. Each stage was manageable. Each stage built trust between the school and the solution before the next commitment was made.
That's the model we believe in. Not a product pushed into a building, but a system built around a school's specific learners, specific spaces, and specific staff.
The headteacher started with a sample kit because she wasn't sure. She ended with a fully installed, bespoke, staff-trained system because each step gave her the evidence she needed to take the next one.
Thinking About Your School?
Every school that has Sensei on its walls started where Welcombe Hills started with a question and a sample kit. If you're at that stage, or any stage beyond it, here's where to begin.
1.Panels in the hands of your learners, no installation, no obligation. See how they respond before making any decisions about your building.
2. 30 minutes with Kavya. We'll ask about your school, your learners, and what you've already tried before suggesting anything.
3. We're working with a small cohort of specialist schools on a supported installation programme. Limited spaces available.
