Description
Learn it. Discuss it. Apply it. Reflect on it. Take it back into practice.
The Ayres Sensory Integration in Schools Workshop Series is a practical, blended learning pathway designed for occupational therapists, physiotherapists, speech and language therapists, and wider allied health professionals working in and around school services across the UK and Ireland.
This full series has been shaped by the realities of school-based practice. It reflects the challenges practitioners describe every day, including limited space, high caseloads, mixed service models, ordinary school environments, inconsistent language, poorly translated recommendations, and the need to make learning meaningful within real educational systems.
Across 21 workshops, the series explores how sensory integration-informed practice can support participation, learning, relationships, emotional safety, communication, assessment, planning, provision, and wider school life. It moves from core foundations and ordinary school spaces, through observation, assessment, and case reasoning, into EHCP provision, delivery models, fidelity, advocacy, and safer relational practice.
This is not a generic theory offer, and it is not built around ideal clinic conditions. It is grounded in UK and Ireland practice and designed to help participants think more clearly, communicate more confidently, and apply learning more effectively in real school contexts.
This School Series did not begin with a course outline. It began with listening.
Since 2023, ASI Wise and The Sensory Project have been undertaking an intentional review of learner experience across workshops, modules, tutor groups, Communities of Practice, peer support spaces, case discussions, feedback forms and conference work. Kath’s audit data has helped us ask a more useful question than “what should we teach next?”
We asked: what are learners, advisers, therapists, managers and services showing us they need?
The answer was clear. School-based sensory integration learning needs to become more structured, more practical, more connected to current policy, and more responsive to the real complexity practitioners are facing every day.
The new Ayres Sensory Integration in Schools Workshop Series is the first visible step in that wider organisational redesign. It sits within a deliberate repositioning of workshops and modules across the UK and Ireland, shaped by audit, feedback, clinical data, Communities of Practice and the changing needs of children, families, schools and services.
This is not just a new workshop series. It is the right response to the need.
Format:
Blended learning; a online self-study workshop with practice-matched tutor groups.
Each session follows the same learning rhythm:
- Learn it.
- Discuss it.
- Apply it.
- Reflect on it.
- Take it back into practice.
Practice matched tutor groups
We know that school-based practice can look very different depending on your role, setting, and service model. Our small tutor groups are matched, as far as possible, by professional and practice context, for example, mainstream schools, specialist schools, visiting services, or integrated school-based roles. This helps OT, PT, SLT and wider AHP colleagues explore ideas in ways that feel relevant, supportive, and easier to take back into everyday practice.
This series is designed for:
• occupational therapists
• physiotherapists
• speech and language therapists
• wider allied health professionals
• practitioners working in mainstream, specialist, visiting, integrated, independent, community-linked, and multi-agency school roles
• clinicians who want a joined-up pathway rather than standalone training
• professionals looking to strengthen confidence in school-based reasoning, communication, provision, and implementation
What is included:
What participants will gain
Learning Outcomes – through taking part in the full series, participants will be supported to:
- Strengthen understanding of how sensory integration informed practice relates to participation, learning, relationships, emotional safety, and school life
- Apply sensory integration-informed thinking more confidently in ordinary school environments, including where there is no clinic
- Develop a clearer shared language for working with teachers, senior leaders, families, and wider professionals
- Use observation, sensory history, questionnaires, and formal tools more thoughtfully in school-based assessment and formulation
- Interpret findings in ways that connect clearly with participation and everyday school function
- Write clearer and more workable recommendations for EHCPs and equivalent provision plans
- Make more defensible decisions about universal, targeted, consultative, and specialist models of support
- Think more clearly about dosage, intensity, delivery models, fidelity, and adaptation in school contexts
- Advocate more confidently for sensory integration-informed AHP practice within school systems
- Contribute to safer, more relational, and more preventative practice across school services
Why choose the full series:
The full series offers the strongest joined-up learning experience across the whole pathway.
- It helps participants build both breadth and depth.
- It supports clearer thinking across participation, assessment, provision, implementation, and leadership.
- And it provides a coherent route for taking learning back into real school-based practice.
The full 21-workshop bundle includes:
- Participation First: Linking Sensory Integration to Learning, Play, Relationships and School Life
- Sensory Integration in Ordinary School Spaces: What to Do When There Is No Clinic
- ASI, Anxiety and Emotional Safety in Schools: Linking Sensory Integration to Emotional Health and Wellbeing
- Playgrounds, Halls, Corridors and Classrooms: Finding Sensory Opportunities Across the School Day
- Supporting Transitions Through a Sensory Integration Lens
- Building Shared Sensory Language in School Communities
- Working with Teachers and Senior Leaders: Explaining AHP Roles in Ways Schools Can Use
- Advocacy in Schools: Making the Case for Sensory Integration Informed Practice
- Sensory Integration in Schools: Policy and Practice Across the UK and Ireland
- Building Communities of Practice Around Sensory Integration in Schools
- Clinical Observations in Schools Through a Sensory Integration Lens, including SOSI-M and COP-R
- Using the SP and SPM-2: Understanding the Patterns Beyond the Scores
- Using the AASH: Understanding the Patterns Beyond the Scores
- The Movement ABC and Beery VMI Through a Sensory Integration Lens
- The Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency Through a Sensory Integration Lens
- Ayres Sensory Integration in Schools: Case Studies from Practice, including Outcome Measurement
- From Assessment to EHCP Provision: Writing Recommendations That Actually Work
- Universal, Targeted and Specialist Support: Choosing the Right Level of Input
- Dosage, Intensity and Delivery Models in School-Based Practice
- Fidelity in Schools: What Counts, What Helps, and What Needs Caution
- Restraint Reduction in Schools: Sensory Informed and Relational Practice, including Callum’s Law
