In Conversation | How to provide better support to mentors working with refugees
In this blog, Giulia Clericetti from Refugee Education UK (REUK) shares how their new ESOL training course, developed in collaboration with The Bell Foundation, has supported volunteer mentors who work with refugees as part of their Educational Mentoring Programme.
Refugees face numerous setbacks and challenges on arrival to the UK. The Educational Mentoring Programme run by Refugee Education UK (REUK) aims to ease this transition by pairing newly arrived refugees with a volunteer mentor from the community to provide support with their well-being, academic studies, and English language skills.
We spoke with Giulia, their Senior Educational Mentoring Coordinator, to learn more about how the new English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) training for volunteers has helped them to nurture a welcoming space and sense of belonging for their mentees.
What is the difference that one-to-one support such as the Educational Mentoring Programme makes for refugee students?
Young people seeking asylum in the UK arrive with a huge range of previous educational experiences, from illiterate to having completed secondary education. Once they enrol in college in the UK, they are placed at the ESOL level that mostly reflects their English competency. However, other factors such as their previous education and the impact of trauma and stress both before, during and after their journey also have a big impact on their pace of learning.
All this means that ESOL classes often host students with a unique mix of abilities and are unable to tailor to individual needs. That is why REUK’s educational mentoring programme matches each young person with a volunteer mentor who can meet them where they are in their educational journey, go at their pace and help them address the gaps in their knowledge.
What else can mentoring help refugees with?
The benefits of mentoring are not only academic: mentors endeavour to build mentees’ confidence and create a safe space where they can ask questions and dare to try. They offer the young refugees support and guidance through the highs and lows of navigating an unfamiliar system and difficult decision making, encouraging them to believe that they can reach their goals, even if there are some setbacks.
Mentors sometimes become a point of reference for a whole family that is new to the UK system, however their support is especially important for the large majority of those in our mentoring programme who have arrived as unaccompanied minors and don’t have a family to guide and encourage them.
What else can mentoring help refugees with?
Our mentoring programme is powered by volunteers and the willingness to help of people from all ages and backgrounds. Volunteers bring a lot to the programme:
Have you come across any challenges?
Many volunteers don’t have any teaching experience or if they do, it might not match their mentee’s type or level of education. Because they fit their volunteering around other commitments, however, they only have a limited amount of time to dedicate to training. On the other end, mentees might bring up wider issues happening in their lives, and it can be hard for volunteers to strike a balance between wanting to help while maintaining healthy boundaries.
What does the new ESOL training consist of?
REUK and The Bell Foundation worked together to build a training package that would enhance mentors’ teaching and ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) related skills, while offering guidance on approaching life skills from a language learning perspective. This second element is achieved through a framework that connects content and situations relevant to the lives of young refugees with the ESOL learning objectives and core curriculum.
The first training module is hosted on the learning platform Articulate Rise and volunteers can take it in their own time. It provides an overview of the structure of ESOL at Further Education colleges and how it fits in the wider education system, how mentors can support their mentee’s ESOL learning and then a focus on the four skills - reading, writing, speaking and listening - and on the exam requirements. The final part introduces the “ESOL framework” developed by REUK and The Bell Foundation, helping mentors explore how they can navigate and use it for their sessions.
The second part of the training, online but live, brings this learning to life. Mentors practise different teaching skills, from roleplay to adapting exam papers using the framework’s topics, and learn practical tips and suggestions. A third, optional part is available for those mentors who have been using the framework to exchange experiences and suggestions with one another.
What is the aim of the framework?
Central to the framework is helping mentees learn relevant and useful language that will help them in their everyday life and develop the skills they need to progress in their education at school or college. It also provides mentors with a structured resource to help plan their sessions and get some ideas of topics to explore with their mentee.
The guidance covers a wide range of topics which were chosen by consulting young people in the mentoring programme, mentors, and mentoring coordinators about what they thought would be most useful. From education and social services through to healthcare and employment, the guidance aims to build the language skills and, as a result, the confidence of young people to help them to deal with a variety of situations they might encounter.

“The training was also useful for my own background knowledge and to inform my mentoring sessions in a broader sense, to give context to some of what my mentee is going through”.Mentor
What has been the mentors’ response to the training?
Most mentors have reacted very positively to the training. It became clear that even those who had been mentoring for some time didn’t necessarily have a clear picture of the ESOL structure and curriculum, so we decided to make this a core training that all mentors are asked to attend after being matched with a young person. The training can be taken at any time, making it more easily accessible and making that foundational knowledge available as needed - something really helpful considering that mentors can join the programme and be matched at any point throughout the year.
And how has the training given mentors a better understanding of ESOL?
Overall, the training has helped achieve our goal of upskilling volunteers with a varied background to deliver educational guidance and support to their mentees. Mentors have told us the training gave them “a much clearer understanding of ESOL” but it was also “useful for my own background knowledge and to inform my mentoring sessions in a broader sense, to give context to some of what my mentee is going through”. They appreciate the ideas for teaching activities and the links and references to resources.
Crucially, as one mentor put it, the framework “makes the goals of the [ESOL] core curriculum applicable to real life”, providing “a good wraparound for ESOL classes at College”. It is this connection between ESOL and real life that is at the core of the training and framework. Understanding the goals of the ESOL curriculum, then looking at how to adapt topics outside of the curriculum to build towards those goals, being taken through the process and having examples to follow opens infinite possible applications to approach topics of interest to the mentee from a language learning perspective.

At the start of the session my mentee could not form a sentence on this topic and now he can.Mentor
How does the framework help mentees to see their progress?
The framework uses can-do statements that can be tailored to the needs of each individual, enabling both mentor and mentee to see progress in a clearer, non-judgemental way. Realising that “at the start of the session my mentee could not form a sentence on this topic and now he can” highlights the small changes that happen all the time in mentoring. Being able to recognise and acknowledge these changes allows mentors to show their mentee the progress they have made, increasing their confidence and reducing any frustration with the pace of learning.
In conclusion, the training and framework are a simple but effective tool to quickly upskill volunteers in their teaching ability and make mentoring sessions more helpful both for the educational progression and for real life situations faced by young refugees.