Details of our on-campus Level 1 and Level 2 mentor training. Please click here for an overview of our training requirements.

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Upcoming training dates

Level 1 Mentor Training 

Level 1 Mentor training January 2026 session: Tuesday 6th January 2026 10:00 -16:00 

Booking link: https://forms.office.com/e/qpTe9ppQ5D

Level 2 Mentor Training  

Level 2 Mentor training January session. Thursday 8th January 2026 10:00 – 16:00

Booking link: https://forms.office.com/e/q1UEGhsEPu

Focus placement only overview training

For mentors who are mentoring solely for focus placement (and do not have a main placement beginning teacher), there is an alternative one-hour mentor training online:

Focus placement only mentor training

Monday 12th January 3:30 – 4:30 online

Booking link: https://forms.office.com/e/hTuqtb909X

Teams link will be sent to you in January prior to the session.

For further information on any of the training dates above, including booking questions, please contact the Partnership team on partnership@soton.ac.uk

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Level 1

Must be attended by all new mentors who have never mentored (for any provider) before.

Can also be covered in part or in whole by accessing recorded materials for mentors who have mentored before.

Mentor training module	Overview of content
Unit 1: Role and attributes of a good Mentor	Understanding definitions and attributes of an effective Mentor.   Unpacking the role and responsibilities of the Mentor (including Safeguarding).
Unit 2: Understanding beginner teacher development	Building knowledge of developmental models of Mentoring in teaching and professional contexts.   Understanding the novice practitioner; making tacit professional knowledge explicit.
Unit 4: Building a rapport and settling mentees into school placement	How to build your relationship with your beginning teacher. Developing skills to manage the essentials of induction that are common to all ITE programmes.
Unit 5: Observing expert colleagues and reflecting	Unpacking skills of observation and guiding trainees to reflect post-observation.
Unit 8: Effective feedback methods	Developing an understanding of effective and detailed verbal and written feedback and consider what the trainee will do with the various types of feedback. This will include examples of how to have professional conversations and how to encourage the trainees to ask/answer more than they have to listen.   Developing effective skills for lesson feedback   Building professional skills around understanding how to deal with challenging trainees / situations. Managing tricky conversations.
Unit 11: The UoS curriculum – how to support my trainee to apply this in school	Building an understanding of the 3-pronged approach to mentee support and development   Building strategies to link theory to practice.   Building understanding of ITaP and how best to support your trainee through this process.

Level 2

Can also be covered in part or in whole by accessing recorded training materials.

Unit title	Focus of unit
Unit 3: Inclusive Mentoring practice and Trainee Wellbeing	Guiding and supporting neuro-divergent trainees and trainees with additional physical and emotional needs.   Exploring workload practices and work life balance as essential to teacher wellbeing and retention.
Unit 6: Co-planning and articulating the curriculum	Acclimatising the beginning teacher to the school’s curriculum and sequencing with reference to departmental schemes of work.   Exploring co-planning and co-teaching in the early stages of teacher development.
Unit 7: Mentoring and Instructional Coaching techniques Effective feedback methods	Unpacking the role of ‘Mentoring’ and ‘Instructional Coaching’ as techniques best suited to the development of the beginning teacher.   Exploring the impact of mentoring conversations for trainee development.   Developing an understanding of effective and detailed verbal and written feedback including examples of how to lead professional conversations and how to encourage active trainee involvement within these.     The role of non-evaluative lesson observation, video as prompts to lesson discussion and live-coaching.
Unit 9: Flexible and Adaptive mentoring	The application of the ideas of ONSIDE (Hobson, 2016) mentoring in a range of possible scenarios.     Introduction to the ideas of dialogic mentoring and mentoring as an ongoing conversation.
Unit 10: How to move trainees on	Using the models of beginning teacher development to support trainees at various points within their training including when they move school.
Unit 12: Understanding the ITTECF	Exploring the main features of the ITTECF   Building understanding of the mentor’s role in supporting the trainee within this framework