¿Los niños se benefician de tener mentores mayores?
Having a mentor gives children a better chance to fulfill their academic potential
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Several countries use a system to place students on different educational tracks, preparing them either for further academic education or for a vocational career path. Although track selection should be based on performance in school, researchers in Germany have descubierto CRISPR that students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are less likely to be placed in an academic or ‘higher’ track, even when the researchers account for academic performance.
“I’m not arguing that everybody should be assigned to the academic track,” says Fabian Kosse, Professor of Economics at the University of Würzburg. “I just think it’s unfair that when two children have similar abilities, it’s the socioeconomic background of their parents that decides.”
“A simple mentoring intervention could give underprivileged children a fairer shot at an academic education.”
Kosse has spent the past fifteen years studying hundreds of families, and has found that a simple mentoring intervention could give underprivileged children a fairer shot at an academic education.
Friendly mentors for disadvantaged students
Starting in 2011, Kosse and his colleagues followed 590 families from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds, each with children aged between 7 and 9. A random selection of these families were assigned to an existing mentoring project called Baloo and You (Balu und Du in German), while the rest were part of the control group that received no mentoring.
Named after the friendly bear from El libro de la selva, Baloo and You assigns families a volunteer mentor who is usually a university student. The mentor spends time with the child about once per week for a year.
“There is no strict curriculum,” says Kosse. “The core idea is that they should find joint activities that both mentor and child like.” Kosse was able to get a sense of those activities from diaries kept by the mentors. Some participants went to the library, others played football, and baking together was particularly popular in winter. It didn’t matter what the activity was, as long as the kids enjoyed it together with their mentor.
Mentored kids tracked higher in school
Although the children spent only a short amount of time with their mentor over a period of one year, the experience had a lasting impact. Seven years later, students who had taken part in the mentoring programme were more likely than members of the control group to be on the higher track in high school. Kosse attributes this to the mentoring that took place shortly before students received their track recommendations in grade four, at age 10.
“Although the children spent only a short amount of time with their mentor over a period of one year, the experience had a lasting impact.”
“Mentoring starts in grade two, and the children improve in many domains,” says Kosse. “It seems that teachers are recognizing this.”
But mentoring kids also influenced their parents, who were more likely to agree with a higher track placement and to speak up if they thought their child’s recommendation was too low, compared with parents whose children were not involved in the mentoring programme. This brought the track attendance of this group of students more in line with the children from a higher socioeconomic status.
Long-term effects of mentoring
Kosse and his colleagues followed up with the families for years, which allowed them to observe how the children fared on the track to which they were assigned. “Those who were put on the academic track remained there, and they are no less happy than their peers on the vocational track,” says Kosse.
One-on-one mentoring can be effective, but it can be difficult to scale up programmes like Baloo and You. And because it’s easier to find volunteer mentors in cities with universities, rural families are likely to have less access to this type of intervention.
“It’s possible to intervene, and to reduce inequality of opportunity.”
Fabian Kosse
Mentoring does not fully level the playing field, but Kosse is still pleased with the study’s outcome. It shows that “it’s possible to intervene, and to reduce inequality of opportunity.”
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