Year 7 pupils from Dartmouth Academy, part of Education South West were recently trained as mentors by Future First.

The mentor-mentee relationship is a very special one, we often think of the mentee getting all the benefits of being mentored, but this is not the case.  The Future First mentoring programmes place equal emphasis on both sides of the relationship. 

Year 7 mentors will benefit from training in improved communication and listening skills and acting as an empathetic support to younger pupils.  The pupils are now working with Dartmouth Academy Year 6s and children from Stoke Fleming Primary School.  They spent some days together taking part in a series of activities about transition from primary to secondary, finally they all participated in a careers workshop. 

The mentoring days were highly successful and involved members of the community to come in and work with all pupils around aspirational careers.  These visitors were rigorously questioned by the pupils and offered excellent advice.  They were from fields such as neuroscience, financial management, the police and fire services, nursing and many more.

Nicola Perrott, Assistant Principal, at Dartmouth Academy said:

“I am delighted that we were able to work closely with Future First to enable our pupils to be trained as mentors.  There are so many benefits to this and it’s been great to see all the children supporting each other.”

Paul Girardot, Principal at Dartmouth Academy said:

“It’s been great to see how seriously the older children have taken their mentoring training and what they have been able to offer their younger peers.  Programmes such as the Future First one are so valuable as they provide children with confidence and support in a way that perpetuates such a positive culture all around the school.”

Matthew Shanks, CEO of Education South West said:

“Many congratulations to all the Dartmouth pupils who undertook this mentoring training.  At Education South West we want all schools to collaborate for the benefit of Devon’s young people and the work Dartmouth Academy and Stoke Fleming Primary have done here is an amazing example of that practice.”