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- A rewarding role, building relationships with children and parents who have difficulties
- Opportunities to progress to more senior mentoring roles, with supervisory or coordinating duties
- Requires good communication and listening skills, and the ability to gain trust and respect from pupils, students and parents
As a learning mentor, you'll work in schools or colleges, and will support students of all abilities with issues like poor attendance; lack of self-confidence, self-esteem or motivation; failure to achieve their full potential; behaviour or emotional difficulties; difficulty settling into school or college; and personal difficulties. You'll work with students on a one-to-one basis outside of the classroom, or provide group activities.
DAY-TO-DAY DUTIES
- Developing one-to-one mentoring relationships with pupils
- Visiting parents at home to give them advice about dealing with issues and concerns
- Developing action plans for students and monitoring their progress
- Working closely with teachers and other professionals like social workers, educational psychologists and education welfare officers
DAY-TO-DAY ENVIRONMENT
Your work may be emotionally demanding at times.
You'll need
As a learning mentor, you'll need counselling skills like active listening and a non-judgemental approach, knowledge of psychology and English language, teaching skills and the ability to design courses, the ability to work well with others, customer service skills, sensitivity and understanding, and patience in stressful situations.
There are no set requirements for this role, so you can apply directly. You'll usually need a good standard of general education, especially in literacy and numeracy, and paid or voluntary experience with working with children or young people.
College courses in subjects like mentoring, supporting teaching and learning in schools, or information and advice for supporting learner progression are non-essential but may help get you started in this career. You can also take a T level in education.
You can do an advanced apprenticeship in supporting teaching and learning in schools.
You'll also need clearance from the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) in order to work with children or vulnerable adults.
CAREER PROSPECTS
With experience, you could specialise in working with particular groups, like excluded students. You could progress to more senior mentoring roles, with supervisory or co-ordinating duties. You could choose to do further training and gain qualifications to move into roles like student advice and guidance, teaching, speech and language therapy, educational welfare or social work.