S5/6 Industry Mentoring

What is involved in S5/6 Industry Mentoring?

  • Mentoring is an approach to support students to take responsibility to find their own solutions to achieve their full potential.
  • Every student is allocated a mentor from industry or the local community to be their mentor for an academic year. Where possible, an attempt is made to 'match' a student to a mentor who has experience in a career of interest to the student.
  • The student will meet with their mentor four times during the course of the year. This meeting will often coincide with the availability of progress data from tracking or full reports.
  • The mentor will support the student to identify their progress before supporting them to find the right solutions to the academic challenges they are facing.
  • Each mentor meeting will last approximately twenty minutes with actions checked at the next mentor meeting.
  • Given the 'match' in relation to career, there is an additional time allowed for the industry / community mentor to have a discussion with the student about planned career pathways.

What kinds of questions might a Mentor ask?

On a scale of 1-10 (with 10 being the best), how would you rate your academic progress since our last Mentor meeting? Could you pick out the two subjects where you feel you are making the best progress at the moment? What is making the difference in these subjects? Where are your 'struggle' subjects at the moment? What would your teacher say about your progress in this subject? What advice do you think they would give you to take your 'score' from a 4/10 to an 8/10? What are your next steps going to be? What will we take away as action points from this Mentor meeting? I want you to go home and talk about this Mentor meeting with your parent/carer... what are you going to say about your progress in subjects?

How can a parent / carer get involved?

Knowing about the existence of the Mentoring weeks is a really good start! You can find this out from the School Calendar available via the following link here. Mentor meetings will take place during the week specified (unless they have to be rescheduled for some reason). Mentors will often encourage that the student starts by focusing on the positives, so you might consider asking what the 'strength' subjects of the student are, or what general level of confidence the student has in his or her learning at the moment. A key part for you to hear is that the student has a plan for continuing good progress or addressing the areas that need attention! S5 and S6 students are matched with an industry or community mentor for good reason, as the hope and expectation is that the mentor will have some additional time to impart knowledge of career paths, the world of work or more generally the world outside school. You could consider asking a little about the sector that the mentor is in and a little about this wider part of the discussion.