Mentoring

Dedicated time.

We live in a target driven culture. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. We appreciate and endorse targets when they help us to achieve something that we have been aiming for. A bit of added encouragement to achieve is a good thing. However there is a point where having to meet targets can make work very…busy.

In this instance, it is easy to forget the importance of taking time to focus not on the target but on the person; not on the ‘student’ but on the child. We all know the value and importance of having someone spend undivided, dedicated and intentional time with us. We all know the impact it can have on our students and children. With this in mind, it is worth remembering the value of mentoring.

Put very simply, mentoring it about ensuring that a student gets dedicated, personal and intentional time with a professional.

What will be achieved in this session? You are already asking the wrong question. We are not talking here about achieving, we are talking about valuing. About giving the student time with an adult who is on their side, who has time and skill in listening, and whose main aim is to invest in the personal development of the student. The mentoring session could involve playing a game, having a conversation about things in general, discussing something in depth that the child is concerned about in school. It is at all times child focused and child-led. The mentor is there to support, encourage and respond to the child.

It is important to be clear about what mentoring is because it is significantly different to tutoring. Tutoring aims to develop the student academically within a professional, pastoral environment. It uses mentoring skills but within a definitively educational framework. Mentoring is different in that the purpose of it is not to lead the child into new academic learning. It is to respond to the child wherever they are at personally and be there for them. It is about kindness. To use a term from the American psychologist Carl Rogers (1902-1987), it about showing unconditional positive regard to the child. It is about making sure that the student has dedicated time with a caring adult. It would be a great sadness that if in our target-driven culture, we allowed education to become all focused on academic development and we sidelined personal development (we are not against targets, as said before, but we need to recognise how our culture works). That is what mentoring is for. That is why mentoring is so powerful: it is about developing a person – developing a future.

We can provide this service to schools alongside tutoring and interventions. We ensure that our mentors have:

• counselling training so that they are trained in how to listen well
• mental health awareness training so that they can support and ensure the well-being of the child
• comprehensive safeguarding training, with detailed policies and practices in place
• a clear understanding that they work with potentially vulnerable students and so are fully committed to ensuring that there is clear communication with the school’s DSL
• Enhanced DBS documents
• a large dose of patience and kindness!

As with all of our services, it is driven from a vision that we are an education service that is here to help students, schools and families. We have a high-value, low-cost ethos that permeates what we do.

We are able to offer mentoring at a highly cost-effective price. We are proud to be able to do this as we know that the service that we provide is essential and needed. More and more, we are coming to acknowledge that students in schools are in need of extra support. Offering an accessible, cost-effective and professional mentoring service is our way of supporting schools, families and students. By giving dedicated, intentional, unconditionally positive time.

Number of sessions	Price	Price per session
5 (hour long) mentoring sessions	£60	£12
10 (hour long) mentoring sessions	£100	£10

We provide this service by coming to your school and meeting with a student on a 1-2-1 basis. The location of a mentoring session would usually be in an intervention room or meeting room where the student could have the privacy to not be overheard. We would work with your school to ensure that this service was delivered in a professional way. We have detailed safeguarding policies and practices that we follow for mentoring (available to download below) and we would work with your school to ensure that all safeguarding requirements are carefully followed.

The key details regarding our safeguarding practices for mentoring are:

• all mentors will have Enhanced DBS documents and valid forms of ID upon coming to the school
• physical touch would be limited to the absolute necessary and no more
• the mentoring sessions will always happen in school, in a designated room that staff are aware of. The mentor will ensure that staff in the school know when the mentoring sessions are starting and ending
• the room should have a glass panel on the door
• detailed notes will be kept regarding the sessions
• any concerns will be passed directly onto the school’s DSL
• confidentiality will not be promised to the mentee under any circumstance and it will be explained (if it is asked for) that this is for the well-being of the child
• any disclosure made will be passed onto the DSL in the school immediately, in written format, taking care to note the exact words, the time and date, and the questions asked by the mentor (for more information on our practices regarding disclosures, see our safeguarding policy below)
• under no circumstance will contact be made with the mentee out of school. This includes all forms of social media. Any request by the mentee to connect on social media will be politely declined

For comprehensive details about our policies and practices regarding safeguarding and safeguarding in mentoring, see the documents below.