The responsibility of mentoring: being bold in educational engagement

One in four (25 per cent) 15-year-olds in the UK struggle with low wellbeing, rising to more than one in three (34 per cent) among those that admit to skipping classes and more than four in 10 (42 per cent) for those who do not feel a sense of belonging at school (PBE, 2025).

Trusted adult support, akin to mentoring, is widely recognised as being able to make a real difference to young people’s confidence, wellbeing and engagement with school – as we know through our Power2 Rediscover one-to-one mentoring programme.

Mentoring is a crucial support mechanism and has a valuable contribution to inclusive education. Support from an adult, who is not a teacher or known to you in any other capacity, can be transformative .

But what if a less conventional form of mentoring could benefit both the mentor and the mentee? At Power2, our cross-age peer mentoring programme has been effective at helping both younger and older children engage with school through giving them something special to offer.

Power2 Thrive offers young people the opportunity to become a mentor, instead of only being given one. Over 16 weeks they spend a morning or afternoon each week mentoring a younger child in a local nursery. By giving these young people a position of trust and responsibility, we instil in them that they can do it, they do matter, and we watch them rise to the occasion. 

Not only is this form of mentoring unconventional, but it also represents an unusual form of inclusive education. Young people are taken out of school to get them back in school. It might seem counterintuitive, but many of the young people we work with are already disengaged from learning; they might have low attendance or exhibit disruptive or withdrawn behaviour in lessons. Giving them a part of the day to look forward to, where they feel useful and valued, improves their engagement and attendance overall.

“One of the evident and obvious impacts of the programme on these young people was that the day when the session was on, was the day that they would be in. When you want very simple evidence of how much a youngster values something, that’s the quickest and easiest way.” Katherine Kilbane, Assistant Headteacher and Inclusion & Safeguarding Lead at Denton Community College

An independent evaluation of Power2 Thrive, carried out by Stories of Change and supported by the Prudence Trust, found strong evidence of young people’s improvements in confidence (83 per cent), communication (82 per cent), self-esteem (80 per cent) and attitude towards education (70 per cent) and offers new insight into what makes the programme so impactful.

Trusting young people to be mentors clearly works. Young people who are experiencing challenges are often put into boxes about what they can achieve. A young person who might struggle to concentrate in lessons, find it difficult to communicate or whose anxiety impacts their school attendance isn’t normally the first in line to be trusted in positions of responsibility.

By creating a space that feels different from their usual school environment, mentoring gives young people the confidence to open up, try new behaviours and shed the defensive habits they may carry into lessons. These relationships allow young people to see how learning develops a toddler, thereby increasing their understanding of the importance of education.

Young people also take on real professional responsibility - wearing a Power2 lanyard, supporting toddlers, and working towards a formal qualification. For many, this is the first time they have been trusted with a meaningful role in a way most won’t have experienced before. But the benefits are not one-directional. Toddlers develop skills learnt from teenagers who they may not otherwise have interacted with, contributing to a wider sense of community.

Skills taught in the group classroom sessions - communication, emotional regulation, active listening - are immediately practised in the nursery setting, so young people can internalise and apply them in real situations, not just learn them in theory. Inclusive education allows young people to develop skills they may not otherwise have developed in a traditional setting, allowing them to recognise their strengths and even develop goals for the future.

Inclusive education can play out in many ways and no one definition can prescribe the way an organisation commits to it. Instead, at Power2, we find creative ways to support it, and this recent evaluation gives us confidence in the effectiveness of Power2 Thrive. It confirms that it is valued by young people, their families and teachers, with particularly strong evidence of impact on confidence, communication and self-esteem, all of which support inclusive practice.

Be creative about inclusive approaches to education – it pays off.

Read the evaluators’ view HERE.

The IEC blog provides a platform for a range of voices and perspectives. The views expressed are those of the individual author and should not be taken as representing the official views of the Community.