Training and accrediting a school staff as mentors: experience of a primary school in Northern Ireland

Arrangements for initial teacher education in Northern Ireland are different from England and Wales in three major respects. Firstly, no formal contracts exist between Higher Education Institutions (HEI) and schools for the training of student teachers. Secondly, no financial resources are transferred from the HEIs to the schools to assist with supporting student teachers while on school placement. Thirdly, the competence framework has been designed to identify the distinctive contribution which schools make to the training process. The amount of time student teachers spend in schools, however, is the same as that in England and Wales but no formal training has been provided for schools to enable them to undertake the new and additional responsibilities which the competence framework implies. This paper describes an initiative in which the whole staff in a primary school in Belfast participated in a programme of Mentorship Training which was provided and accredited by the University of Ulster. The programme which comprised two modules was offered at postgraduate level and was designed to assist the teachers to develop a more structured and systematic approach to supporting and training student teachers and newly qualified teachers. On completion, the programme was evaluated and the findings are reported in this paper.