Stop a stranger on the street and ask them to name a person who has had the biggest impact on their life. Chances are—with spouses and family excluded—they’ll name someone who mentored, coached, and supported them, probably through a really tough time. This is because the developmental relationship, when built with structure and purpose, goes beyond a simple friendship model or a buddy system. It is the kind of mechanism that, in adults, sees people have a greater sense of belonging, motivation, and confidence in their careers.1,2,3
In young people, we’ve seen in-school peer mentors significantly improve the wellbeing and integration of younger students with autism, help hundreds of immigrants and non-English speakers find the cultural fluency and language to articulate their feelings, and provide a lifeline to students at risk of getting lost in the system for behavioural reasons. As one extreme example, we’ve seen an eleven-year-old girl enter secondary school and not speak to a single person for three weeks until she was paired with a 15-year old trained mentor in her school.
Reinventing the wheel – but doing it badly
Peer support programmes are extremely popular within schools, precisely because they can be so impactful, but also because they look deceptively easy to institute. Between 35–65 per cent of schools in England are estimated to have some form of peer support provision,4,5 supporting at least 88,000 primary school students and 24,000 secondary school students in state schools across England every year.4 In other words, at least 1.5 per cent of all state school pupils in England participate in a peer support programme each year.
Costs of peer mentoring interventions are moderate, ranging from £700–£1050 per student per year,6 with state-funded schools in England investing at least £78.4–£117.6 million per year in these programmes. Schools typically fund these programmes from their Pupil Premium allocations, but are increasingly looking for funding elsewhere since education budgets have been cut.
Peer support interventions are often self-organised within schools (whereby the cost of the intervention is realised through dedication of staff time and school resources), though they are also often supported by external third parties with specialised resources and expertise. Unfortunately, the quality of in-school and third-party peer support programmes can vary widely, failing for a range of reasons including conflicting priorities in schools, lack of time, lack of trust in peer supporters among pupil populations, and inappropriate selection processes for participations and pair matching.
This is especially true for programmes where online platforms replace in-person interactions or community volunteers are connected with vulnerable young people; there is very little evidence in support of the effectiveness of online mentoring interventions and, when non-school-based volunteers are used, their quality can vary greatly.