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Whole School Approaches to Peer Mentoring

FYA peer mentoring programme work in partnership with students and secondary schools across the borough to identify different ways of embedding peer support within each school. William Ellis is an example of a school which has taken a ‘whole school approach’ to peer support and peer mentoring.

Whole school approaches see young people from a year group trained up to become peer mentors to support peers in younger years. This could be through 1-1 sessions or groupwork sessions for students to access in a number of different ways.

William Ellis peer mentors met with mentees in younger years both through offering 1-1 sessions and running group activities for their mentees, all aimed at supporting their wellbeing at school, helping their peers feel less alone and that they always have someone to talk to, including signposting to other support within the school and beyond. Students who took part shared their own experiences of what helped them in school and supports their mental health and passed this on to their peers through the mentoring sessions that they designed as well as less structured peer support and mentoring offered during registrations and break times.

In this video you can see how William Ellis trained year 9s to support the new year 7s to feel welcome in the school and share any issues that they might be facing for their mentors to troubleshoot and problem solve together.

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