School Mentoring Project

In the Norwich Opportunity Area (NOA), disadvantaged young people have poorer attainment by the age of 19 and are less likely to successfully move onto further or higher education than their peers. Local evidence suggested that pupils are most likely to experience dips in attainment when moving between different phases of education and the most disadvantaged pupils can find this move a challenge if they are not able to access support to overcome challenges and set-backs.

The NOA partnered with Your Own Place CIC to recruit, train, support and coordinate volunteer mentors to work with students in Years 10 and 11 across 3 secondary schools in Norwich. 

Following some initial struggles with the project, the NOA commissioned Your Own Place to continue the project from June 2019 to Summer 2020. Your Own Place set up referral pathways for schools, held workshops for potential mentees and trained existing and new volunteer mentors. 

Schools were responsible for identifying and referring students who would benefit from the project. 

Your Own Place captured individual student and mentor feedback where possible and completed a project evaluation. 

Student mentoring works well to provide young people with a space for different, open-ended conversations and to talk about ambitions, especially for young people who may not have these conversations elsewhere. A successful mentoring project needs to be long term and co-produced and owned by schools, alongside an experienced mentoring organisation. 

Mentees involved in the project shared overwhelmingly positive feedback about their experiences and mentors shared their experience of building trusted relationships: 

“My mentor helped me to read more about the army and police before joining.” – mentee 

“He opened up a lot more over time and gave me more eye contact. He became much more positive about himself and what he could achieve.” – mentor 

“The fact that the mentee has recognised that the support he’s been given is of value to him. It’s justified me continuing mentoring.” – mentor

Please see the resource section for 2 case studies, one focusing on a mentor and one on a mentee, and the final report on the project. 

Considerations for the future include focusing more on school engagement from the beginning of the project. 

Suggested recommendations from Your Own Place included: 

• Workshops with schools to define the project and expectations. 
• Engaged, resourced and accountable school leads. 
• A co-produced understanding of mentee referrals. 
• A comprehensive engagement strategy to recruit mentees. 
• Sharing of an impact strategy as a virtuous circle to maintain and continue good working practices and referrals.

The project delivery and planned evaluation were unfortunately both cut short due to the Covid-19 Pandemic. Please see the final report on the project in the resources section for more information on the evaluation of the project:

• 23 mentors were trained in the first 6 months, with further mentor training planned and volunteers signed up.
• 12 mentees were referred for support and 11 of these matched up to a mentor.
• 55 hours of mentoring was delivered.