Mentoring in schools and colleges
Learning mentors are paid members of school or college staff, not volunteers: a learning mentor is employed by the school to work with named pupils whose attendance, behaviour, confidence or engagement is getting in the way of their learning.
Anyone who has met the word “mentor” inside a school and cannot tell which of three unrelated things it means, including pupils asked to become one.
It keeps a paid staff role, a pupil to pupil scheme and a statutory teaching role from being run under one set of rules, when only one of the three puts a child in the mentor’s chair.
A school writes one mentoring policy covering all three, and never writes the thing that matters most: what a pupil mentor does in the ninety seconds after another pupil discloses something.
The post sits in the pastoral team rather than the teaching structure, the mentor holds a caseload rather than a class, and the work is one to one or in very small groups. Three different arrangements share the word mentoring inside a school, and this page separates them: the learning mentor role, peer mentoring between pupils, and mentoring for early career teachers.
What a learning mentor does, in primary and in secondary
A learning mentor works on the barrier rather than the subject. The barrier is usually attendance, behaviour that has become a pattern, a bereavement or family change, anxiety about coming through the gate, or a transition the pupil has not managed. Typical activities include a weekly one to one session, a morning meet and greet for pupils whose attendance is fragile, structured work on a specific goal such as reaching registration on time, liaison with the family, and attendance at pastoral meetings where the mentor is often the person who knows the child best.
In a primary school the role skews towards emotional regulation, friendship difficulties and the transition into secondary school, Year 7 in England and Wales, Year 8 in Northern Ireland, and P7 into S1 in Scotland, and the mentor is a familiar presence across the whole day. In a secondary school or college the caseload is larger, more formally referred, and more often tied to attendance data or exclusion risk. The post is not a teaching assistant role and not a counselling role: a learning mentor does not deliver therapy, and a school that needs therapeutic input needs a therapist.
No single mandatory licence exists for the post, which is an England construct in origin and is not a job title used across all four education systems, so the nearest equivalent elsewhere may carry a different name and sit differently in the staffing structure. Qualifications in learning mentoring are offered by awarding organisations and delivered by colleges and training providers, some online, and each school sets its own requirement. This site is a reference: it does not list courses, providers or vacancies, and it does not publish salaries for the role.
Peer mentoring in schools: pupils supporting pupils
Peer mentoring in schools pairs an older or more experienced pupil with a younger or newer one, under adult supervision, for a defined purpose over a defined period. Common schemes include transition buddies at the move into secondary school, Year 6 to Year 7 in England and Wales and the equivalent point in the other two systems, reading partners in primary schools, anti-bullying and playground schemes, and sixth formers supporting Year 11 through exams. The scheme normally runs for one academic year and is coordinated by a named member of staff.
How peer mentoring helps students is worth answering carefully. The clearest reported gains are in belonging, confidence in a new setting and the smoothness of a transition, and they frequently show up in the mentor as much as the mentee, which is why schools often use the scheme as a development opportunity for the older pupil. This site does not put a number on attainment gains from peer mentoring.
Peer mentoring training is the part schools most often shorten and should not. A pupil mentor needs to be taught what to do when the conversation goes somewhere they cannot hold, and it needs rehearsing rather than explaining. Peer mentors are children, and the checking question is often answered backwards. A pupil under 16 cannot be criminal record checked at all, in any nation of the United Kingdom, so for a fifteen year old there is nothing to decide. For a sixth former of 16 or 17 a check is legally possible, and a school should reach that decision against what the role involves rather than by reflex. What actually controls risk in a peer scheme is supervision, visibility and short sessions in sight of staff.
A pupil discloses something serious to a peer mentor
The peer mentor says, in words rehearsed in training, that they have to tell a named adult and will do it now, and then does. The peer mentor never promises secrecy and is never asked to carry it, record it or judge whether it is serious. The supervising member of staff takes it into the school’s safeguarding process the same day, then checks on the peer mentor, who has just had a difficult experience nobody is monitoring.
Mentoring for early career teachers
Mentoring for early career teachers is a defined professional role rather than a pastoral one, and the mentor is a colleague, not a volunteer. In England, a teacher in their statutory induction period is an early career teacher, induction runs across two years, and the arrangements set by the Department for Education include a mentor distinct from the induction tutor who makes the assessment judgements. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland run their own induction arrangements, with different names, lengths and mentor requirements.
The distinction that matters is the same one that matters in every workplace scheme: the person who mentors should not be the person who assesses. Where the two collapse into one role, the early career teacher stops bringing problems, which removes the only thing the mentoring was for.
The three arrangements, side by side
| Arrangement | Who the mentor is | Who is mentored | Typical length | Checks required |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Learning mentor | Paid school or college staff | Named pupils on a caseload | Ongoing, reviewed termly | Enhanced check with the children’s barred list |
| Peer mentoring | An older or more experienced pupil | A younger or newer pupil | One academic year | None. Supervision instead |
| Early career teacher mentoring | An experienced teacher | A teacher in statutory induction | Two years in England | Already held as school staff |
Whether an adult role requires an enhanced check with a barred list check depends on whether it meets the legal definition of regulated activity, and that turns on how often the role is carried out and on what the role actually involves, not on how important it feels and not on who is watching. Supervision was never part of the test for paid staff: a learning mentor working frequently with pupils is in regulated activity whether supervised or not. The supervision exemption only ever applied to unpaid volunteers, and the Crime and Policing Act 2026 removes it from 1 September 2026, so from that date a supervised adult volunteer in a school in England is in regulated activity too, where the activity is carried out frequently or meets the period condition in the legislation. The guidance announcing the change states that it applies to England, so a school or college in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland should check its own national position rather than assume the change reaches it.
The check itself is a DBS check in England and Wales, PVG scheme membership in Scotland, and an AccessNI check in Northern Ireland.
What each side owes in a school mentoring scheme
The mentor, paid or peer
- Keeps to the session pattern the school set, and says when they cannot
- Stays inside the role: a learning mentor does not counsel, a peer mentor does not advise, a teaching mentor does not assess
- Passes a safeguarding concern the same day to the person the school names for it: the designated safeguarding lead, the title used under Keeping Children Safe in Education in England, and the equivalent named post in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland
The pupil or teacher mentored
- Is told at the start what the mentor is for, and what the mentor will pass on
- Can decline the match or ask for a different mentor, without it affecting anything else
- Is told when the arrangement ends, before it ends, rather than discovering it in September
The school supervises all three arrangements, names one person accountable for each, and keeps records for a period it has written down, because UK GDPR sets no fixed retention period. Anything relating to a safeguarding concern about a child is kept for decades, not years: the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse recommended 75 years. Safeguarding in England follows Keeping Children Safe in Education, and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland each publish their own statutory guidance.
Choosing between them
Choose by the barrier, not by the budget. A pupil who cannot get through the school gate needs a learning mentor with time in the timetable and access to the family. A cohort that arrives in September knowing nobody needs a peer mentoring scheme with proper training. A newly qualified colleague needs a teaching mentor who is not their assessor. Running one because the others were unaffordable usually shows up as a peer scheme being asked to hold pupils who needed an adult.