Mentor
The Mentor’s role is crucial to the success of the ECT.

Novices benefit from seeing models and worked examples, they may require extensive support.
Fletcher-Wood, 2018
As a mentor, you have the amazing role of coaching your ECT. You’re the expert, and you contextualise your ECT’s learning to the subject and your school. This role means guiding your ECT through the programme with weekly observations and instructional coaching sessions. You help your ECT to have the best possible start to their careers and apply their learning in your school’s context.
What does a Mentor do?
A Mentor observes their ECT weekly (ECT1) or fortnightly (ECT2) using Steplab; the observation lasts approximately 15 minutes. This is then followed by a 45-minute weekly mentor meeting where you carry out instructional coaching with deliberate practice to help your ECT to bridge the ‘knowing-doing’ gap.
A Mentor attends training too! As a Mentor in your first year, you attend two conferences in total: one at the start and one at the end of your first year of mentoring. You also have two online clinics to help you to practise your coaching skills – and all our events give you opportunities to network and meet other Mentors. Two of our Mentors who met in a breakout room are now friends and have become two of our new Visiting Fellows delivering clinics themselves, so you never know where mentoring will take you!
Who supports the Mentor?
Your Induction Tutor will be the person to book you on events and ensure you have the time necessary to mentor.
It is important to note that the roles of Mentor and Induction Tutor are different – the Mentor supports, develops the ECT and informally observes in low-stakes observations; the Induction Tutor formally observes the ECT and assess them against the Teachers’ Standards.