In the run up to National Mentoring Day, which takes place tomorrow (annually on 27 October), OxLEP Skills has announced it will be working in partnership with Oxford Brookes University on a mentoring scheme for Year 12 students across the county.
The programme was launched at the 10th Oxfordshire Enterprise Adviser meeting, which took place at Oxford Brookes University on 10 September.
School and college careers leads and enterprise advisers from across the county attended to hear about the programme and discuss career requirements and expectations for schools and colleges, as well as ideas to help achieve them.
Adam Fields, Widening Participation Officer at Oxford Brookes University, delivered a mentoring training session to help attendees roll out the programme and brief mentors on their role, setting expectations and the benefits of being a mentor.
Oxford Brookes University is the ideal partner for our new programme, since they currently run 59 mentoring programmes spread across five different areas - including supporting students with work placements, connecting them with alumni and enabling students from backgrounds where there isn’t a history of university placements in the family.
Mike Foster - of Chapman, Robinson & Moore Accountants - is an Enterprise Adviser matched with Didcot Girls and St Birinus Boys Schools in Didcot. He has been running a mentoring programme with sixth form students for two years with fantastic results and is delighted that more schools will soon be running their own programmes.
Mike (pictured above) said: “The Enterprise Adviser role is so rewarding. You can truly see the impact you are making on the lives of young people, for example, the sixth form student that I was mentoring saying that I had given him back his reason to study hard.”
A student who took part in the programme said: “I learnt how to improve my work ethic and established ideas of what to do in the future. I had someone to talk to about everyday life. It inspired me to think about what I love doing and what I want to become in the future.”
Schools and colleges across Oxfordshire will now start to roll out the programme.
Enterprise Advisers are volunteers from business who use their knowledge of the local business landscape to support a school or college to develop an effective careers plan and to create opportunities for students with their business contacts in the area.
They are supported by Enterprise Coordinators, jointly funded by LEPs and The Careers & Enterprise Company, who match each Enterprise Adviser with a school or college in the Enterprise Adviser Network (EAN) and facilitate careers and enterprise activities.
In Oxfordshire, 40 schools and colleges are now part of the Enterprise Adviser Network and 36 Enterprise Advisers are matched to them.
If you or your business would like to get involved in our work with schools, please email: [email protected].
