Can you mentor a small group of students aged 11 -18 years to raise their aspirations and provide them with the life skills to achieve? Approximate commitment: 16 hours per academic year (2-3 sessions per term).
Mosaic’s secondary school mentoring programme provides a package of opportunities to raise the aspirations of young people and close the gap between those aspirations and their attainment.
Objectives
The programme uses positive role models to improve students’ confidence, self-efficacy and employability. We have developed a powerful package of mentoring support for young people that can be tailored to students’ needs which includes group mentoring, workplace visits and inspirational speeches.
The programme
Mentoring programmes cannot replace teachers’ ability to improve school achievement. Research does demonstrate clearly, however, that aspirations play an important role in educational and professional achievement for all young people and that effective mentoring programmes can significantly raise aspirations and close the aspiration-attainment gap, particularly amongst BME students.
Effective mentoring programmes can boost participants’ aspirations, confidence, self-belief and motivation. Crucially, mentoring programmes enhance participants ‘soft skills’- personality traits, social graces, communication, language, personal habits, friendliness, and optimistic outlook – which are increasingly important for success at school and in the current job market.
Participating students are those with a combination of the following:
- Low or limited aspirations
- Low confidence
- Weak sense of personal agency
- Limited understanding of career opportunities
- Undeveloped ‘soft skills’
Mentors
The Prince’s Trust’s Mosaic Secondary School group mentoring programme works with groups of up to 30 students, aged between 11 and 18 years old. The students are mentored in small groups (of between 3 and 6) and participate in a range of activities which will directly enhance their ability to succeed in future educational and professional environments.
