Most "free tools" from education vendors follow the same pattern. You land on a page, you can see a preview of something useful, and then a form appears asking for your name, your school, and your email before you're allowed to see the result. The tool is not really free. It is a lead capture form wearing a tool's clothing.
We built something different, and it is worth explaining why, because the reasoning shapes everything about how the OMNIA tools tab actually works.
A free tool that gates the free part is not a free tool. It is a form with a preview attached.
What actually sits behind the tools tab
The tools grew out of a simple observation: the same problems come up constantly in SENDCo conversations, on LinkedIn, in NASENCo cohorts, in the corridor between lessons. How do I know if my admin systems are actually working. How do I know if a target I've written is genuinely SMART or just SMART-shaped. How do I explain the financial case for SEND investment to an SLT that thinks about it as a cost centre. How do I hand over cleanly at the end of the year without my successor rebuilding everything from scratch.
Each tool answers one of those questions directly. A 20-question self-audit for admin systems. A SMART target checker against all five letters individually. A cost-of-delay calculator that puts a real number on what a gap between concern and support is costing. A graduated response builder you can edit to match how your own school actually works, then print as a poster. A one-page student profile generator. A handover pack with a real countdown and fillable document, not a static PDF template.
None of them ask for anything before showing you a result.
Why we built it this way
The honest answer is that we do not have a marketing budget to run, and we do not think we should be trying to build one out of SENDCos' inboxes. What we do have is a founder who is a practising SENDCo, and a genuine evidence base behind the platform. The thing worth spending on visibility is credibility, not a growing email list of people who gave up their address to see a score.
There is also a more practical reason. A tool that is clearly branded, genuinely useful, and free to use in full is the kind of thing that gets forwarded to a colleague, printed and pinned to a staffroom noticeboard, or mentioned in a NASENCo cohort chat without anyone having to be sold to first. That only works if using it does not cost the person anything beyond their time.
Staffroom noticeboards get pinned to and then forgotten. A printed page with nothing on it identifying where it came from is a dead end the moment it's separated from the person who printed it.
That is part of why the printable tools carry a small footer with a QR code linking back to the live version, not just a logo. A SENDCo leaves, the noticeboard stays up for another two years, and the page still finds its way back to the tool it came from.
The one deliberate exception
There is exactly one place on the tools tab where an email address is requested, and it is worth explaining why that one is different. The SEND Admin Health Check shows your score and section breakdown instantly, free, no form. What sits behind an optional email is a personalised three-point action plan built from your lowest-scoring section, sent to your inbox rather than generated on screen.
The distinction matters. Gating the score itself would undercut the entire format, the reason a self-assessment gets shared and commented on is that people can see their result immediately and react to it. Gating a genuinely deeper, personalised follow-up is a different kind of ask, made after someone has already seen enough value to judge whether the trade is worth it.
What's next
More tools are coming. Some are conversions of things already built and tested elsewhere, some are new. A separate initiative, aimed at building genuine peer community for international SENCOs rather than another resource to download, is being planned properly before it launches rather than rushed out to fill a gap in the schedule.
The tools tab will keep growing. What will not change is the rule that started it: if it is called free, it has to actually be free to use, not just free to look at.
Every tool is live now and free to use in full, no sign-up required. Browse the free tools