Friday, January 30, 2009
Every child a Mentor… and a Mentee
A National peer mentoring scheme has been launched in England with funding until 2011.
More and more schools have been introducing peer mentoring into their provision over the last decade. This approach has now been backed by the UK government with the announcement of a National Peer Mentoring Programme for all schools in England to be delivered by the Mentoring and Befriending Foundation.
The MBF will offer training, resources and advice to all settings in the 11-25 age range through coordinators in each region of the country. Schools using the free service receive visits and one to one support through the process of establishing successful peer mentoring; in effect having a mentor themselves.
The commitment to peer mentoring was announced after the MBF ran a pilot scheme with 180 secondary schools which was independently evaluated by Canterbury University. The evaluation report, published late in 2008, reported 88% of Mentors and 86% of Mentees saw peer mentoring as "very positive". Interviews and questionnaires were used with staff and learners as well as evaluation of data to formulate the report's conclusion that,
" the strong anecdotal and qualitative evidence provided by the mentee and mentor "voice" and the quantitative evidence gathered from pupils and scheme coordinators highlights the benefits experienced by those involved."
"The very positive findings provide an enhanced basis for the engagement of further schools and the opportunity for existing projects to become more embedded within internal school structures. "
The evaluation report highlights that the most successful peer mentoring programmes are formalised within the school and supported with strong leadership, enthusiasm and commitment by the staff involved:
"Outcomes were related to the type and strength of processes employed by the scheme coordinators for implementing the selected model and the systems."
With the support of the services of MBF, schools can now put these recommendations into their own practice in peer mentoring. Read the evaluation report