Editorial guidelines

We welcome editorial contributions on any subject related to special educational needs for publication in SEN Magazine and on the senmagazine.co.uk website. Please send your article to [email protected]. If you have any questions, please email us or call 01200 409810.

Checklist – what we need

• Article text
• Headshot photo of yourself – file size at least 50kB
• A sentence describing who you are and what you do
• Original photos or images to accompany your article (300kB or larger)
• Web address, contact details or social media handles (max 3)
• The postal address where we should send your copy of the magazine

Text

Article contributions are typically between 300 and 2000 words long. We can accept most standard document formats, but preferably not Apple Pages. Don’t worry about formatting, style, headings, grammar or spelling. Your text will be edited and adapted to fit the space available. SEN Magazine articles generally follow a narrative style, so please avoid bulleted lists or tables unless essential. See here for an example of how articles are laid out. If your contribution includes commercial or promotional references (eg for a product or service), these will normally be removed. For product announcements or advertorial, please contact [email protected] for options.

Audience

Our readers include experienced SEN professionals, school leaders, parents and carers, so please pitch your article accordingly. It’s helpful if you can include practical detail and examples to illustrate what you’re writing about.

Style

Please feel free to express yourself in your own personal way. An informal narrative style works best. If your article is an academic paper, a marketing press release or a formal report, we will normally adapt it to suit the style of a magazine article.

Images

Photos, graphics or diagrams can greatly help the presentation of your article. If you have any suitable original images, please send them with your article. Please do not send images that may be subject to copyright, such as images you find on the internet. If an image shows identifiable minors, please ensure you have permission to use the image. Images should be provided as individual files (300kB or larger) and not embedded in your text file. Standard image formats such as jpg, png, tiff are fine. It’s helpful if you can edit the image filename to include an identifier and/or a caption to help us identify the image file and link it to the text, for example Image 1 for the Sue Jones article on Play: Sam concentrating on finishing the game.jpg.

Publication

We may publish your contribution in SEN Magazine, on the SEN Magazine website or both. We can’t usually promise to publish your article in a particular issue of the magazine, and there may be a significant delay between submission and publication. The digital issue and website versions of your article will normally be promoted in our email newsletter and via social media (X, Bluesky, FaceBook, Instagram, and LinkedIn). It can happen that different versions of your article may be published on different platforms and in different issues of SEN Magazine.

Publication schedule