Mike King is CEO of Releasing Potential and Executive Headteacher at Releasing Potential School; Mike has worked in the third sector for eighteen years after a career as a secondary school teacher, and has set up a range of Alternative Provision programmes as part of the work of Releasing Potential. 

This workshop will explain the complicated process of transition from an unregistered Alternative Provision to an Ofsted-registered Independent School from children with Special Educational Needs. It will consider the impact of whole-school transition on students and staff from a relatively unique perspective – that of an alternative provider that does not operate within the National Curriculum framework. The session will share the challenges and triumphs of transition planning at the strategic level, and suggest how mainstream schools, care settings and the third sector can learn from the difficulties faced by Releasing Potential School as it embarked on its journey in 2016. 

Releasing Potential began in 2001 in Portsmouth, offering outdoor education as a way of engaging young people who had become disengaged from mainstream school. Over the last seventeen years, the organisation has grown, and now runs two school sites.

Our approach is holistic and systemic: we believe in creating an environment in which young people can be supported, regardless of their background or level of ability, and our philosophy of belonging, safety, and risk underpins everything we do. Our faith in the power of community determines the ways that we work, giving us a strong sense of identity across all six areas of the organisation:
school, forest school, outdoor education, mediation, institute and enterprise

The Institute is the academic research and professional training wing of Releasing Potential, an educational charity and Independent School for young people with Special Educational Needs.