Page 52 - Guiding-at-risk-youth-through-learning-to-work-Lessons-from-across-Europe

Guiding at-risk youth through learning to work
Lessons from across Europe

experience may be important. The matching needs to take account of a range of
factors such as gender, language requirements, life experience and
temperament.
Regarding the relationship between the young person and their mentor, it is
important that they feel that they are equals, in contrast to the teacher-student
relationship (Blaber and Glazebrook, 2006). It has been found that mentees
appreciate the chance to have an informal relationship and that they may feel
more comfortable discussing certain topics with a mentor. However it is vital that
boundaries are set and that both mentor and mentee understand the limits of the
relationship and their responsibilities with regards to their partner. It is also
important that projects take account of the need to manage the process when a
mentor chooses to end their participation: the end of a mentoring relationship can
cause mentees to feel rejected or let down and therefore cancel out the short-
term benefits of their participation (Joseph Rowntree Foundation et al., 2004).
Effective management and governance structures should be in place for
mentoring projects (Blaber and Glazebrook, 2006), including ensuring support is
available to the mentors, engaging parents, and monitoring programme
implementation. Continuous evaluation is also essential to ensure that the project
is targeting and helping those in need in the most effective manner. Such
projects also need to be followed up by programme coordinators to ensure
schools and mentors are on the right track and providing appropriate support for
young people. The mentoring projects led by the Roma education fund represent
good practice, involving regular visits to schools and even parents.

4.2.2. Supporting young people in key transition points
Most children transfer successfully from primary to lower secondary level, which
usually corresponds with the end of compulsory schooling. Further, in most
European countries over 80 % of the population remains at school at least one
year after the end of compulsory education (European Commission, 2009b),
indicating that most young people also make a successful transition to upper
secondary level education. Attendance rates, however, tend to decline in the
second year of post-compulsory education, suggesting that transition was not as
successful as first thought or that the students have not been supported
sufficiently in their new educational path.
Some anxiety is inevitable in any change and children deal with this in
different ways. A longitudinal study on the transition from primary to secondary
level in the UK found that 84 % of young people feel prepared on entry to
secondary school; the rest do not feel ready or feel worried or nervous about the
change (Evangelou et al., 2008). Children from disadvantaged backgrounds may

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