With registrations for senior schools now open and next year’s 11+ cycle well underway, now’s a good time to start making sure your child feels fully prepared for the months ahead. We asked Adam Goodbody from to explain why mentoring could be the key to boosting your child’s self-confidence on the road ahead – and how and why their approach can help take the pressure off both parents and pupils.
Getting your children into the right secondary school has long been a concern for parents.
With increasing competition for places, rising fees and a growing percentage of families moving their children from state primary to secondary independent schools, the pressure located at this juncture has never been more acute. Whether you’re sending your children to state or fee-paying schools, it’s a big challenge to get right.
As such, the support provided to young people – children who might be only nine or 10 – is important, but equally easy to get wrong. At Oppidan, we are continually focused on developing an approach that is child-centric, de-pressurising (for parents and students alike) and process-oriented. There’s no taking away from the fact that outcomes matter. They do. We just want to go about it in a different way.
Recent reports from the US have underlined again the value of mentoring as intrinsic to student development. It has been shown to have considerable effects on student attainment and longer-term success, whether it comes to secondary school grades, future salary or university offers. There's real meat behind the method.
In concrete terms, academic mentoring seeks to develop successful outcomes but in a way that fosters independence. That’s because good mentoring is about modeling effective learning patterns and behaviour and providing a sounding board to help students understand their objectives as well as expanding aspirations of who they might become. Anecdotally, you might think of the Nanny McPhee aphorism: ‘When you need me, but do not want me, then I must stay. When you want me, but no longer need me, then I must go" or even the biblical: ‘Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime’.
Of course, such an approach is at the heart of good teaching. Many do it, many tutors too. At Oppidan we are seeking a more formally recognised approach that puts whole-child development at the centre – not as the happy bi-product – of a good education. It’s why we talk about ‘journeys’ and our personalised support is there for the long term. Our mentors are both full-time professional educators and freelancers who are passionate about supporting children through mentorship alongside other professional strands.
What both have continually found: mentoring doesn’t work at the last minute.
So, how can mentoring help my child?
Oppidan mentors are carefully trained in whole-child ethos, and armed with a handbook that has been developed in partnership with the Oxford Character Project. Our assessment criteria in schools (particularly around interviewing) is a product of our collaboration with the Skills Builder partnership. Having been paired with a mentor with similar interests and background, students are formally assessed through an APT (Academic Profiling Test) which acts as a diagnostic for the mentor to plan session focus. From then on, the handbook comprises 20+ consolidated sessions, ranging from goal setting, financial literacy to reflection journalling. In sessions for the 11+, these sit alongside academic tasks which helps students meet targets along the journey.
Choosing and applying for the right secondary school is a challenge well met by a mentoring approach. It’s a big decision both financially (in the case of independent schools), academically and emotionally. Exercises in self-reflection, time management and habit formation are therefore intrinsic to a successful transition. Our work in schools and our work at home run side-by-side, mutually informing and encompassed by the mentoring mission.
In a system oriented around assessments, with constant markers of progression, it’s hard to release young people from the train tracks. Whilst we wait, or press, for a wider change, the least we can do is develop a model of support that frees children into greater enjoyment of the process.