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What is Assertive Mentoring?
Eamonn Farrar is the Chief Executive of Hurworth Comprehensive School in Darlington. He’s also one of the NCSL’s National Leader of Education making Hurworth a National Support School. He and the Head Teacher, Dean Judson, developed the school’s unique mentoring systems which transformed a low performing school in the mid 1990s, into one of today’s top performers nationally.
HURWORTH’S INTAKE
Hurworth School is a smaller than average comprehensive school serving Hurworth and the south east of Darlington. There are very few students who are from minority ethnic groups and who speak English as an additional language. The percentage of students who have learning difficulties and/or disabilities is below average but the percentage of students with a statement of special educational needs is above average. The percentage of students entitled to a free school meal is below average. The school has a centre for autistic students.
Hurworth School holds the Basic Skills Quality Mark. The school has specialist status in mathematics and computing and is a foundation school. Having scored outstanding in every OfSTED judgement in 2008, it is now a HPSS. Its second specialism is in Science and it is also a specialist school for G&T.
FROM AN UNEXCEPTIONAL BASELINE
The school had an unexceptional achievement profile throughout much of the 1990s. In 1998 just 38% of pupils achieved 5+ GCSE A*-Cs and around 65% achieved level 5+ at the end of KS3. Since then there has been an exceptional transformation in achievement. In 2007, 96% of pupils achieved 5+ GCSE A*-Cs (81% including English and Maths). And the school’s KS3 level 5+ SAT scores are now consistently around the 90% mark. The DCSF’s 2008 KS2-4 contextual CVA scores ranks the school 28th in the country with a score of 1050.4 None of the 27 schools above Hurworth in the table have a better 5+A*-C (inc. E&M) score.
ASSERTIVE MENTORING – A COLLECTION OF SYSTEMS
Between 2001-2004, a DCSF sponsored team from Cambridge University conducted action research into the school’s remarkable improvements in performance. They concluded that the single most significant factor in the school’s extraordinary transformation was the introduction of a number of systems collectively referred to as Assertive Mentoring (AM). These systems include student target setting, tracking, mentoring, intervention & checking.
1. PUPIL TARGET SETTING
At the very beginning of Year 7 & Year 10, the Senior Leadership Team (SLT) calculate end of key stage target levels or grades for each subject using a formula which adds substantial value to each pupil’s most recent SAT scores. The targets are then given to teachers who are encouraged to change their pupils’ targets upwards during the key stage, but they are not allowed to revise them downwards. The rule is that the under-achiever is pulled up towards the aspirational targets. Targets are never revised downwards towards the under-achiever.
2. TRACKING PROGRESS AGAINST THE TARGETS
There are pre-scheduled times throughout the key stage where teachers use their judgement to predict what level or grade their pupils are heading for if the current quality of their work, effort etc.. continues. Teachers must justify their judgements to their HODs who, once satisfied, enter the predicted levels/grades onto an electronic departmental spreadsheet. Departmental data is then transferred onto a whole school spreadsheet and the Assertive Mentoring Senior Leader (AMSL) interrogates it, challenging HODs where necessary. Tracking increases in frequency the closer pupils get to public examinations. In Years 9 & 11 it is monthly.
3. ASSIGNING MENTORS
All pupils in both key stages are assigned mentors. Mentors use the predictive data to challenge their mentees. The data is unequivocal. There is no point in pupils trying to bluff their way out. And crucial to the effectiveness of mentoring is its assertive style. Whilst supportive, it is never simply a cozy chat as was the case with the school’s pre 1998 soft mentoring systems. Pupils need to feel that the regular one to one conversations with their mentors will be evidence driven, business like and have direct benefits.
The gap between a pupil’s predicted grades and target grades is identified in the mentoring meeting. And appropriate interventions are designed to break down pupils’ barriers to learning. Assertive Mentors arrange: for additional teaching; negotiate curriculum change; provide additional learning resources; involve parents etc. Interventions have measurable academic outcomes but are often about personal development. And Mentors check to ensure the interventions are implemented and that they are having the desired impact. If the intervention isn’t working, pupils are seen again by mentors and new interventions agreed. The systems are relentless. Pupils are not allowed to give up on themselves.
The process of selecting mentors identifies staff with particular characteristics – loads of common sense; respected; relate well to people; good communicators and problem solvers. But ongoing training and guidance are also provided in-house in twilight sessions, which we have developed onto a CD and marketed nationally. And further, mentors sit in on each others’ mentoring meetings. They meet to discuss observations. Learn from each other.
4. CHECKING MAKES THE SYSTEMS WORK
AM checking systems are rigorous and robust. There are no presumptions that commitments will be acted upon unless checked. This gives AM power and forcefulness
SEEING THE FUTURE
For the last seven years, the school’s final overall 5+ A*-C predictions gathered in April of Year 11, has never been more than 1% out when the actual results are published! Which means that the school can tell its pupils at the beginning of Year 10, with absolute confidence, that if they play ball there will be no shocks on results day. This is a very powerful motivational tool.
LADDISH CULTURE
This particular style of mentoring has successfully tackled issues of laddishness and macho image. Ways have been found for pupils to opt out of laddish behaviour without loss of peer status.
TRANSFORMATIONAL
Assertive Mentoring has been fantastically successful at Hurworth School. It has also been transferred, through a Federation led by Hurworth, to help a neighbouring school out of an apparently intractable case of special measures. And it is now being shared by Eamonn & Dean in conferences around the country. Over 800 schools have attended their conferences and more are planned for the future.
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