The value of mentoring in schools
The National Bureau of Economic research just published a recent study into the importance of mentoring in schools.
Much of the evidence is related to the US schooling system but with huge relevance to the UK system and the work we do here at Oppidan. The article “describes a largely unrecognised pathway through which schools promote human capital development – by fostering informal mentoring between students and teachers, counsellors and coaches”.
So, what did the report reveal?
Headlines
Mentoring has consistent and meaningful positive effects on student attainment.
Mentoring is unevenly distributed in schools.
Opportunities for small group work and promoting a sense of collective belonging have the biggest impact on developing mentoring relationships in schools.
Mentoring is beneficial to students of both low and high advantage.
Benefits of mentoring
The research showed the importance of mentoring for cognitive, social-emotional and identity development.
Good mentoring is about modeling effective communication and providing a sounding board to help young people better regulate their emotions as well as expanding self-perceptions and aspirations of who they might become.
In the report it was noted that:
Frequent interactions form strong bonds.
Mentoring facilitates the expansion of social capital to undeserved youth by increasing access to job opportunities.
Moreover, 2/3 of students reported that mentors helped them with life development skills such as finding direction in life, setting the right priorities, navigating life crises, and making good decisions.
These strands are at the core of our commitment to character education and reflect some of the central curriculum features of Oppidan programmes.
The context in schools
It was unsurprising to find that the prevalence of school-based mentorships ranges considerably across schools, with mentoring rates more than x2 as high in some schools compared to others.
Schools at the 10th percentile of the distribution had 10% of students reporting a K-12 natural mentor while schools at the 90th percentile of the distribution had students reporting mentorships at more than double that rate.
The statistics
Long term relationships
Relationships are long lasting, with students estimating mentors played an important role for more than five years on average. This is the reasoning behind our focus on ‘journeys’ at Oppidan both for individual students and schools.
Academic Improvement
The most conservative estimate of the report suggests that having a school-based mentor for all 4 years of high school raises GPA by 0.24 points (in the US context) or roughly the difference between a C+ and a B-. These results reveal that mentoring increased educational attainment by between 0.62 and 0.93 years!
Attendance
Compared to unmentored students, the survey estimates that having a natural mentor teacher, counselor, or coach increases the likelihood a mentee attends university by between 12 to 26 percentage points – a 19% to 46% increase.
For students’ long-run educational attainment, results suggest that school-based natural mentors are associated with a 16.7 percentage point increase in the probability of attending university for low-SES students and an 11.5 percentage point increase for high-SES students.
Boost in future earnings
School-based mentorships raise the mean present value of lifetime earnings for high school freshmen (in the US context) by $60,600 to $92,400.
Timing
School-based natural mentors appear to benefit students most at the margin of supporting them to enroll in university. That's why we choose to focus our attention at secondary on developing skills for Year 12 and Year 13 in both peer mentor training and university transition days.
Overall, the report reveals that: “We find consistent evidence that having a school-based natural mentor increases academic performance and attainment across models based on disparate assumptions, identifying variation, and samples”.
How do we grow mentoring in schools?
First, schools in which students have a stronger sense of collective belonging have higher rates of school-based mentorships. This is one of the key focuses of our Peer Mentor Training that we run in independent secondary schools and multi-Academy trusts.
Second, smaller average class sizes predict higher rates of natural mentorship in schools. Indeed, one of the central reasons we do small group mentoring is backed up by the report which suggests that for every ten fewer students in a classroom, on average, the probability a student forms a school-based natural mentorship increases by two percentage points.
In conclusion the article suggests that schools might promote these relationships by creating more opportunities for students to have multiple, sustained interactions with school personnel in small-group settings and by engendering school environments where all students feel a sense of belonging.