In 2025, Make Happen launched a new progressive project called Picture Your Potential. This is geared towards Year 10 students with SEND, with the aim of developing their confidence in transitioning into Higher Education and increasing their knowledge of the support available to them.
Working alongside the SENCO at our link schools, we select small cohorts of 15-20 students to take part in the six-week project. The programme includes five in-school sessions, and one campus visit. We work with students on topics such as student life, transferable skills, study and financial support, and higher and degree apprenticeships.
A key focus for this project is creating accessible, engaging and creative learning activities. Students get involved in activities such as:
- Creating their own vision boards where they can reflect on the steps they need to take to reach their future goals.
- Team tower building where they can demonstrate their transferable skills and reflect on how they can use these in the future.
- Designing their dream university societies/clubs based on their wide-ranging interests.
- A sorting card game where students match people with industries and pathways such as university degrees or apprenticeships.
At our autumn term campus visit at Anglia Ruskin University Chelmsford, students got the opportunity to explore the campus and take part in an exciting ‘Building a Band’ music workshop, as well as interactive taster sessions in Digital Artistry and Forensics.
A school coordinator who attended the visit commented…
‘It was fantastic to see one of our students go up and perform a guitar riff in front of 4 other schools with the presenters. Especially as this student was not confident but he felt inspired and safe to take part. I could see his confidence growing during the project.’
Our first term of delivering Picture Your Potential was a success, and our team loved getting to know the students. Evaluation data from our first cohort indicates that by the end of the final session, 80% of students agreed that they could go to university if they wanted to. 83% of students also indicated that after taking part in this project, they had learnt something useful about university. We are very excited to start working with our next cohort of students this summer term!
By Kerry Preston, Outreach Officer at Make Happen