Mentor training

Mentoring others – whether they're PGCE trainees, apprentices or ECTs– is a privilege that many teachers enjoy. It's also a big responsibility to help mould the future generation of teachers!

It's an essential duty for all mentors to ensure they're up-to-date about the systems and best practices involved in teaching. Systems and expectations can vary enormously between providers and different training routes. Teaching is constantly evolving and adapting, and under the new quality requirements it will soon be compulsory for all school mentors to have undergone a full training programme. 

For this reason, we offer free mentor training for all our school-based mentors at different levels according to need.

1. We offer regular mentor briefings where we provide the latest information on key priorities, work on improvements and identify areas of focus for trainees. These are regular short briefings aimed at giving you the information you need to get on with the role. These work alongside our regular mentor newsletters, sent direct to your email.
   
   
2. Our Effective Mentoring for Teacher Development programme is a small master's level 10 credit module that gives all of the training you need to act as an effective mentor.
   
   
3. Our Leading Mentoring and Teacher Development programme is a master's level 20 credit module that follows on from Effective Mentoring for Teacher Development. It's aimed at anyone who is leading mentoring within a school, professional coordinating mentors (PCMs) and others. It will also be a prerequisite for the Lead Mentor role, to be introduced under the new quality requirements.

There is an increasing expectation in teacher training for the training to be a partnership between the school and the training provider. Mentors are now enshrined in the core content framework as 'expert colleagues' who are expected to offer clear, consistent and effective mentoring right across the Teachers' Standards.

We understand this takes considerable preparation and thought, which is why all of our mentor update sessions are online and usually after the end of the school day, to ensure that school colleagues can attend. We also record sessions so they can be listened to at any time, or revisited. The Effective Mentoring and Leading Mentoring programmes will be largely led online, though with a face-to-face element.

Example mentor briefings

• Apprenticeship Briefing January 2022 (Second School Placements)
• Core (University led) Primary Mentor Briefing January 2022
• Core (University led) Secondary Mentor Briefing January 2022