Okay good morning everyone before I start I'd like to thank all my colleagues in across the
five colleges who participated in this research and all the students and all the mentors involved,
so what we were looking at is how using mentors, maths mentors would improve the students
engagement confidence and attainment. In the past we just looked at motivation only but this
year we moved on to confidence and attainment these are the names of the colleges involved
and if I go on to my next slide, so these were the objectives
to design the program investigate what aspects have the most positive impact.
And whether it has an improvement in their confidence in math or not and to share the
results which is what we're doing today, and what I will do in my final report.
There were 76 students across four colleges participated in this research
and these are the results of the of how effective the mentoring programs were, mentoring does
have a positive impact on students motivation engagement attendance and attainment how much
positive, in terms of attendance it was difficult to measure across four sites but students being
mentored overall had attendance 84 percent in an environment where the average attendance is
typically 77 percent so there is a measurable difference but you will have to judge for
yourself whether this is high or low. Attainment on average each student went up half a grade but
the real raw data showed half the students went up one grade who were being mentored while half
the students didn't go up a grade but the average of that was 0.5. Confidence we had like a little
we designed the confidence scale which I will put in one of the appendices in my report which most
students went from a confidence level of 2.2 out of 5 to a 3 out of 5. so there is a 0.8 out of 5
improvement in the student confidence who is being mentored this was rated by the teachers.
In interviews motivation had a very big impact so the motivation level improved a great deal more
than the half point improvements that we've seen in some of the other measures and the one point
improvement in the other measures. When we asked students what was the most important thing for
them they said that getting a grade four is the most important thing, it's not so much improving
their maths they ranked those a bit lower but getting a grade four with their main objective and
they said that anything that helps them towards achieving that objective would motivate and,
let's now look at the next slide, now, from talking to students most students the gist was the
same even though the stories were very different this was their situation before being mentored
this was that in yellow we then move on to their perception of what mentoring will do
and then what happened, what they found the mentoring to be like and how they felt at the end
the impact and this is like these are this is a single student journey this is another student's
journey I'll leave you to have a quick glance and read through what's happening across each stage.
So typically a student from the beginning has bad history with maths didn't understand some
of it never really got a grip on it you know the teachers never explained well the perception
there is a bit of negativity but what but how they perceive it will turn positive so my teacher can
explain things in a different way which suggests maybe you know they're looking forward to it
and then how they've seen that manifest during the mentoring and how they felt at the end
and all our students went through that journey every single one that was being mentored
when you ask, when you question them at the end they go through the whole journey
in fairness we only asked students who completed the mentoring program so obviously they're the
ones who found it most useful and stayed but this is their journey. Here is another three students
there were obviously many but these are the five I will highlight again so things came out of there
as well that surprised me a little for example you've got students saying, 'I can ask the mentor
to skip things I already know while I wouldn't ask that to a teacher' so if a teacher is explaining
something to a student a student would feel too shy to say that you know what I know this bit can
you explain this bit instead and with the mentors they feel a lot more comfortable to do that
things like not feeling like they're holding up the class
because the mentor is helping them separately it's and at the end the impact was the biggest factor
the most important measure you've got students saying it improves my confidence
I don't you've got students saying I'm more encouraged to try questions on my own
students saying mentors use simple language and I can ask him to skip what I know so
there is a lot of useful you know measures of impact there if you move on to the next slide.
Now we took two different approaches to the mentoring because of organizational reasons
one approach is for them to attend an additional session with an adult mentor outside a math
specialist but not a teacher outside the classroom so this is an additional lesson to their own
lessons another way is to have maths a-level students come into the classroom and mentor
maybe four or five students concentrate on them while they are actually in one of their lessons
so they don't have to attend an extra lesson there are advantages and disadvantages obviously
if you have an adult mentor that can be expensive he's another member of staff.
Students might not be willing to attend an additional maths lesson so they're happy
while an advantage is once you've got a member of stuff and you're paying them
they're going to stay for the whole year so the students being mentored will have continuity
and if it's outside of class the mentor can talk about any topic that's
that the student needs help with it doesn't have to be the topic that's
being presented by the teacher in that lesson that day so it doesn't have to be so restricted,
having a level math students mentor gcse students in the classroom has advantages the student of
a similar age can speak simple languages we've talked about skipping parts which they wouldn't
ask a teacher student gets help in a lesson that they attend anyway they don't have to go
to an additional lesson and a level math students are cheap we paid hours eight pounds per session
if you think about being the mathematician eight pounds per session 20 weeks a year maybe five or
six mentors doesn't even reach 800 pounds it's the kind of money a principal might say yes to
because it's not serious money I know different colleges have different budgets
negative thing student mentors can withdraw their teenagers after all they might
decide they're bored with it and then you have to recruit someone else to have
continuity for the student in the lessons there is constant interruption when the teacher wants
to speak to the whole class even if the teacher doesn't mind that the mentor carries on speaking
it's still not right it's not ideal but it was difficult to measure which one is better
because the students were very positive in both cases all students were positive whether they
had a student mentor in the lesson or outside students were very positive about the mentoring,
and I'll come back to my conclusions and finding which I displayed earlier
if you're interested in cold hard raw results mentoring works best for a student who
will get close to a great four but will not get a grade four on their own so the mentoring
help nudge them that half a grade so from three and a half to four and a half kind of thing,
if you're interested in really having a positive experience for the student and
motivating them and improving their math I think it's suitable for all students
no matter what grade they are on they will still benefit and they will still enjoy maths and
teachers also notice that they speak out more in class so the students who are being mentored
suddenly have an opinion and suddenly want to and they're not so afraid of making mistakes and this
is one of the comments that really touched me in one of these, a student now says if I make a
mistake I will - I'm determined, there so you've got a student here saying 'if I make mistakes,
but now every time I make a mistake I will learn for from it' so you've
got a gcse retake student who at the beginning didn't take math seriously and felt pressured,
now saying it's okay to make mistakes I'll just learn I'll just find learn what I did wrong,
and learn from the mistakes so I think it does have a positive impact on the students but
if you're interested in cold hard results it has to be a student who will get close will
get on track for a grade three and a half and with that boost will make a difference, and that's it.