The King’s School, business mentoring – Pontefract

About the school:

The King’s School, Pontefract is a specialist maths and computing college with over a 1000 pupils. It has run a number of mentoring and peer mentoring programmes for a number of years:

• To raise aspiration and attainment
• To help reduce bullying
• To aid transition

Mentoring is now embedded within the School’s Improvement Plan as a way of improving community cohesion: both within the school and between the school and local community.

The deputy head, Barbara Tibbetts, has specific responsibility for representing mentoring within the School’s senior leadership team and continually looks for ways to develop it. And three members of staff are timetabled to support the mentoring programmes.

The School’s business mentoring programme

This case study will focus specifically on the School’s business mentoring scheme, where local business people mentor year 10 students on a monthly basis over two years to help them improve their grades. Students who get borderline C and D grades in their GCSE exams are eligible to access the scheme.

The school has developed a clear monitoring scheme, whereby the grade students are currently working at and the effort they are putting in is documented by staff. This is then shared with the mentor to help them plan their meetings with their mentee.

School’s website:

www.kings.wakefield.sch.uk

The business mentoring programme’s aims

• To increase students’ attainment levels
• To raise students’ aspirations for future education and employment

The business mentoring programme’s outcomes

The mentee, mentor and the businesses involved are all achieving their individual outcomes. By students having regular one-to-one meetings with a non-judgemental, experienced mentor, their grade point average and their attitude to their studies has improved and their future plans became much more positive too.

Outcomes for mentees

Results for the current academic year show that of the 17 mentees that were mentored:

• 76% have improved their grades in at least one subject
• 47% have improved their grades in three or more subjects
• 94% have seen an increase in their effort grades and report feeling happier and more equipped for school and the future through having a mentor as it helps them to focus on their studies better and provides them with a ‘sounding board’ for any difficulties or issues they may be having
• 100% have gone on to further education or training

Personal impact statements

Mentees’ views

Tiffany, a year 10 mentee commented that:

“It has helped me to become more organised and improve my grades… …it has boosted my confidence and given me someone to talk to about the things which I find difficult.”

Christopher, another mentee, has also seen the improvements which he has made since having a business mentor:

“When I started being mentored, I wasn’t sure exactly what it was but, since I met my mentor, Ray, I have become more confident and learnt more about revising strategies and planning homework. I’m not sure if my grades have improved but I feel more able to ask questions in class and to complete my homework better.”

Mentors’ views

There are currently 14 volunteer business mentors with nine from two major local businesses, LINPAC and Wakefield District Housing. Both organisations see the benefits of allowing their staff to become mentors.

Christine Booth, employee engagement manager, Wakefield District Housing (WDH), said:

“It benefits us as it helps us to keep connected with our community. Through this, and the other work we do, we are more able to understand the needs of our tenants and support them.”

Christine has been a mentor on the scheme for a number of years and says that part of the challenge is to find out more about the things that young people are interested in. When she started mentoring Alice, she found that she was completely disengaged at school and getting into a lot of trouble. After discovering they were both interested in making things, Christine developed craft ideas for them to do together. This joint activity made it easier for Alice to open up and discuss her issues. During the mentoring process, Christine helped Alice to decide what she wanted to do after school and managed to help her secure a place at college doing childcare.

Sharon, one of Christine’s colleagues, is also a mentor at the School. She meets her mentee, Jake, about once a fortnight and has watched as he’s grown and become more confident. Sharon helps Jake reflect on what has happened to him during the previous week as they go through his planner and discuss any issues that have arisen. Sharon feels this is really therapeutic for Jake as it allows him to understand his own actions more fully and decide if he needed to do anything to amend them.

She’s also found that she has learnt a lot more about what it means to be a teenager today which helps her with the work she does helping to run WDH’s community projects. She says that, for her, mentoring is about: “giving mentees the tools to succeed properly and enabling them to work things out for themselves, not prescribing what they should be doing or putting your own ideas onto them”.

Shanna, a staff member at LINPAC, has been working with Beth since October last year and has helped her to focus and become less shy. Shanna has seen the effect that having a mentor has had on Beth as she is now much more chatty and has found her school reports improving throughout the year. Beth has begun to set and achieve personal goals and now finds it much easier to talk to adults or ask teachers for advice. For Shanna, that one-to-one support has helped Beth to feel more comfortable in the school setting and achieve better grades.

Shanna echoes the other mentors’ views that business mentoring helps you at work as it: “opens your eyes to different ways of looking at things and it can help boost staff morale and show their commitment to the community.”

Project co-ordinator’s view:

All three of the mentors agree that one of the reasons business mentoring works in the School is because of the support and training they provide the mentors. The learning resource centre manager is always on hand if there are any issues relating to the mentoring relationship or to provide them with tasks or ideas to include in the sessions. The School’s deputy head stresses that successful mentoring programmes require staff to be given the time to train the mentors and supervise the scheme and cannot just be set up in an ad hoc manner.

Janet Jackson, the School’s raising achievement co-ordinator is convinced of the impact which mentoring is having on a wide scale within the school:

“All of our mentor programmes have a significant impact on both the mentees and their mentors. We can see improved effort, attainment and aspirations. Our students have more confidence, higher self-esteem and are able to self evaluate and set meaningful targets for themselves. We are equipping our identified students with essential ‘skills for life’ to help them become well-rounded individuals, able to contribute positively to their community.”

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