October 25, 2024. Milton Keynes
Schools Navigator mentors help keep young people in school
The Thames Valley Violence Prevention Partnership has published (October 2024) key findings following the conclusion of an innovative youth violence intervention, testing the provision of youth worker mentors in four schools in Milton Keynes, working to reduce exclusions.
The findings show significant positive impact:
- For those pupils who received the mentoring support, they showed a 17.5% lower level of additional suspensions in the term after the mentoring when compared to those in the control group who did not receive the mentoring.
- The four schools where the Schools Navigators worked had an 11.5% lower level of suspensions than the four schools in the control group which did not have Schools Navigator mentors.
- For those who received the mentoring, students self-reported improvements in their own health and wellbeing following the mentoring sessions.
What are Schools Navigators?
Schools Navigators are trained youth workers, not teachers, who work independently of the school and its disciplinary system.
They come into the school and during the day provide one-to-one mentoring with young people, using a youth worker model of engagement and support, with no disciplinary outcomes. They use an approach of exploring a student’s strengths and weaknesses, consider wider aspects in their life that may affect their behaviours, and seek to develop shared objectives and goals for that student to achieve to help their engagement and attainment with school.
Their support is voluntary and so the student needs to want to engage, together with parental consent.
How was it delivered in Milton Keynes?
Thames Valley Violence Prevention Partnership provided £200,000 funding to commission SOFEA, a local community-led organisation which works with young people to improve their skills and support their education and training.
Three of SOFEA’s trained youth workers provided the Schools Navigator service to the four schools selected to receive the mentoring support.
The schools selected and referred pupils to the Schools Navigators at the point of their first suspension from school. This was done with parental consent.
The Schools Navigators went on to offer up to six sessions of mentoring, one per week, to build a relationship and to explore the issues they want to discuss. They used a range of youth work approaches, tailoring the sessions to meet whatever the needs were.
They also completed self-reported health and wellbeing surveys at the start and finish of the mentoring.
How was the intervention tested?
The Violence Prevention Partnership designed a robust randomised control trial experiment to measure the impact, creating a “treatment cohort” of four schools which could refer students to the Schools Navigators.
Those schools and the referred students were then compared with a control group of four schools and its students also in Milton Keynes, which did not receive the mentoring.
The trial ran across the academic year from September 2023 to July 2024.
What next?
The randomised control trial has now concluded, and the results from the evaluation are positive, showing a benefit to the individuals who received the mentoring and for the school as a whole, with lower suspension rates.
The Thames Valley Violence Prevention Partnership has provided an additional £140,000 to fund SOFEA from the start of term in September 2024 through to March 2025.
This has allowed the Violence Prevention Partnership to work with SOFEA to expand their Schools Navigator provision to 11 schools. This includes the four original schools, the four from the control group, and an additional three schools, all in Milton Keynes.
The full evaluation report is now available to download:
Jules Bottazzi, Director of Strategy & Performance for the Office of the Police & Crime Commissioner, and the Head of the Thames Valley Violence Prevention Partnership, said:
“The results from this evaluation are positive, showing a clear benefit of the Schools Navigator mentors to the individual student and to the school as a whole.
“Reduced exclusion from school is an important step to tackle a key factor that can lead to a young person becoming involved in crime and violence. It will help them stay engaged in their education, improves their outcomes and will improve their safety.
“SOFEA have been a fantastic partner, their youth workers providing a caring response that has helped young people to find their way.
“I am pleased the VPP has been able to fund the expansion of this service across 11 schools in Milton Keynes for the remainder of this financial year. We will ensure the evidence from our evaluation is provided to all our local partners to help inform local decisions and commissioning.”
Notes to Editors
- The Thames Valley Violence Prevention Partnership was established in 2019 as one of a network of Violence Reduction Units set up across the country to tackle the root causes of violence and to test and evaluate new interventions. Its central programme team are part of the Office of the Police & Crime Commissioner and it works with a broad partnership from right across the Thames Valley. More information on our website: www.tvvpp.co.uk