Mentoring

We’ll help you with this.

First we’ll drill down into your child’s need for a mentor, of which there might be several. Your child might be a high-performing student who needs an academic mentor to help them balance all the competing demands being placed on their time. They might need advice and support with specific events like moving to a new school or university. We also have pastoral mentors for students who might be struggling a bit or need a trusted sounding board who is non-judgemental a bit more detached than a member of the family.

Either way, we meet with you to find this out. We then discuss your goals and your child’s personality. Then we present a selection of mentors for you to choose from. 99% of the time the first introduction is a hit. If it’s not, we continue until we find someone your child naturally warms to and trusts.

Absolutely. SLT can introduce a mentor to your family online wherever you are based, and we’ve recently introduced London-based tutors to families as far away as Singapore and Australia. Many mentors can also travel and stay residentially.

Often the best solution is a combination. This allows the relationship between child and mentor to become longer term and more meaningful: a mentor might support your child in person when they’re in London or at school nearby. The relationship will continue online when you’re away. Then your mentor might occasionally join you for part of a holiday, whether that’s abroad or in the country.

We often say there’s a lot more to getting an A than just knowing the content! And this is where an academic mentor comes in. They’re not teaching the content for a specific subject. Instead they look at everything else to make sure your child is happy, confident and firing on all cylinders.

This includes helping with study skills (which can sometimes be overlooked at school) such as effective time management, revision techniques and wider reading required for University entrants.

Academic mentors can work alongside a tutor. Equally, if you have a child who has no problem with the academic side but rather needs help managing all the competing demands being placed on their time, an academic mentor is probably all they need.

Finally, an academic mentor can be a reassuring presence during times of change. If, for example, your son has just been accepted to Eton, he might want to speak to someone who’s been in the same house. The mentor can then visit them during their first half to check all is well, liaise with teachers and report back – giving you peace of mind your child is receiving all the support they need.

Yes absolutely. Beyond guiding them through the admissions process, a university mentor who has been to your child’s chosen university will help them to handle the transition from home or boarding school. Insider tips, such as suggestions for societies to join or the low-down on colleges or halls of residences, will help them to make the right decisions.

Work-wise, in many ways the less structured nature of university is when your son or daughter might benefit most from the experienced advice of a mentor. There are specific times during university when the workload is incredibly high versus the rest of the year, and a mentor will be able to get them well prepared for these crunch points.

A mentor can also help your child think about careers, enabling them to use their time at university to volunteer and do work-experience that makes a big difference on the CV – and can actually make for a much happier and more fulfilled university student.

Yes. Any sort of mentoring is designed to increase a child’s confidence, which should naturally help them develop outside of school. However, we also offer two specific types of mentoring when needed:

Intensive pastoral mentoring -

Sometimes children ‘lock up’. They lose confidence and focus and find it hard to make decisions about their future or cope with demands in the present. A pastoral mentor can help your child talk about the things that are really on their mind and that may be blocking their academic progress, such as relationships or finance. The mentor can give life lessons that the child is willing to accept because they come from someone the child looks up to and isn’t a parent.

Professional mentoring for careers and networking -

Another time we often see young people have a wobble is when faced with the big question of their career. As a result we offer specific mentoring for careers and networking. A mentor can help your child to explore different possible opportunities that might not necessarily be the obvious ones. They can help your child find an internship or introduce them to useful networks. If they have a career they are set on, we can also help them get there by providing coaching in personal branding, interview technique and professional skills; all specific to that industry.