Mentoring for Impact

Abstract

School based mentoring (SBM) is an increasingly popular component of pastoral care programs in Australian secondary schools. Concurrent with growing consensus over the benefits of SBM, there is increasing recognition that the benefits of SBM can be maximised through careful programming, appropriate benchmarking and effective evaluation. Although children spend approximately 40% of their waking hours in school, and SBM is increasingly common, there is surprisingly little data available on the effectiveness of SBM. This paper reports on research into a mentoring program that links undergraduate theology students to teenage students in a secondary school. While the mentoring program was of value to both mentors and mentees, interviews with participants point to the value of aligning the program with guidelines for best practice found in the Australian National Youth Mentoring Benchmarks, 2007.